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rorYKK.IIT DEPOSIT. 



Pioneers of Progress 



BY 

T. A. BLAND 

Author of Farming as a Profession, Life of Benjamin F. Butler, Esau. 

How to Get Well and How to Keep Well, In the 

World Celestial, etc., etc. 



CHICAGO 

T. A. BLAND & CO, 

1906 






fUBRARY of C0NGRF-5S 
Two Conies Received 

AUG 18 1906 

iCop^fcM Entry 
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COPY B, 



Copyright, 1906, by T. A. Bland 



THE BLAKELY PRINTING COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



PREFATORY. 

Biography is the life of history. Without 
it the chronicles of a nation would be of 
small value. It teaches both by precept and 
example. If the example is good the lesson 
is uplifting. The lives of good men and 
women are practical object lessons; and the 
history of such lives is a rich inheritance to 
the world. It constitutes the chief part of 
a nation's wealth. 

The nineteenth century was a record- 
breaking period, in the way of producing 
great men and women. Men and women 
who have distinguished themselves by their 
wise words and noble deeds. 

It was the author's good fortune to be 
born in the early part of that century, and 
to live his manhood life during the last half 
of it, and to enjoy the personal acquaintance 
of some of those great souls who have been 
prominent actors in the drama of progress. 

In this book the author gives his impres- 
sions of those headlights of humanity, in the 
form of brief biographical sketches and per- 
sonal reminiscences. He has tried to be just 
to his subject and to his readers, that his 

3 



4 PREFATORY 

book may be a worthy contribution to the 
biographical literature of his age; he has 
striven to divest his mind of prejudice, while 
showing active sympathy with the views of, 
and strong personal regard for, some of 
those whose lives were, in his opinion, of 
especial value to humanity. 

That his book may prove interesting to 
the general reader, and an inspiration to the 
youth of the country, is the sincere hope of 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS 

Page. 

Abraham Lincoln 17 

Ulysses S. Grant 25 

Wendell Phillips 34 

Lucretia Mott . . . . 46 

Gerald Massey 54 

William Lloyd Garrison 62 

Matthew Simpson 69 

Henry Ward Beecher 74 

Thomas K. Beecher 81 

Lew Wallace . . 86 

Benjamin F. Butler 98 

John Clark Ridpath 109 

Horace Greeley 120 

Susan B. Anthony 127 

Andrew Jackson Davis 134 

Ryland T. Brown 140 

Fred P. Stanton 147 

Peter Cooper 152 

William Byrd Powell 155 

Hiram W. Thomas 161 

David MacDonald 168 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

Page. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 176 

Julia Ward Howe 184 

Alfred B. Meacham 189 

Alva Curtis 198 

Robert G. Ingersoll 203 

Lydia Maria Child 209 

Francis A. Walker 216 

Henry George 221 

Alfred Russell Wallace 232 

John Boyle O'Reilly 242 

Richard T. Ely 246 



INTRODUCTION. 

By Rev. H. W. Thomas, D. D. 

Crystals enlarge by accretion; cells multi- 
ply and grow. From the moneron and mol- 
lusk the life-work went forward and up to 
the body and mind of man. 

A most wonderful fact, is the self-con- 
sciousness of the individual. The self, the I, 
that affirtns the self, and the other; that dis- 
criminates between the I and the me; that 
says, this is my body, my house; that draws 
the line between being and existence. The 
material world is objective; is perceived 
through the outward reading senses. It has 
to do with properties. The spiritual world 
is subjective; lies within, and has to do with 
qualities, or the principles of the moral order 
of the good. 

The tremendous meaning of the life of 
man is found in this fact of the self-conscious 
individuality and volitional power to think 
and do. It is not possible for all these in- 
dividuals to live in separateness ; the needs 
of each compel some form of association; 
hence the family, the state, the church, and 
the relations of industry and commerce. 
And in the progressive forms of civilization 
the facts of the one and the many; or indi- 
7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

vidualism and socialism must always be pres- 
ent; and both must be recognized and con- 
served; for each has its place in the one and 
larger social whole. 

In this world-process of larger and better 
becoming, there have been in all the long 
years the "Pioneers of Progress/' Despot- 
isms in government and religion, aristocracies 
of learning, wealth and the self-enforced 
authority of kings and ecclesiastics, have 
sought to enslave the millions. Even in 
Athens Socrates had to drink the poison; 
and two thousand years later Bruno was 
burned at the stake in Rome. The blood of 
martyrs has marked the slow, hard way of 
religious liberty through the long centuries; 
and countless millions have died in the bat- 
tles of contending despots. 

But Galileo came with his telescope; the 
old astronomy gave place to the new; the 
Reformation lifted up the rights of reason 
and conscience in religion; the infallibility of 
the Pope has been declared ; but the temporal 
sovereignty is forever gone. Under Louis 
XIV the authority of the church was su- 
preme; and it owned one-third the wealth of 
France. The revolution wrought the sec- 
ularization of the social order; and now that 
brilliant nation is a Republic; civil authority 
is supreme. 

With the ever changing order of progress- 
ive becoming, is the vast commercialism of 



INTRODUCTION 9 

these great years; made possible by the 
mighty forces of machinery. With this have 
come the possibilities and dangers of new 
forms of the abuses of wealth and power. 
The trusts and the fabulous fortunes of the 
few are a growing menace to the rights and 
liberties of the many. The old slavery of 
the colored race came to an end with the 
War of the Rebellion; a new form of white 
slavery is arising in the oppressive power of 
a moneyed aristocracy, that not only seeks 
to control labor and commerce, but to cor- 
rupt legislatures and courts of justice. 

The work of the "Pioneers of Progress ,, 
is never done; some of the old questions of 
dispute may be settled, but with new condi- 
tions others arise. There are always the 
two parties— the Conservatives and the 
Radicals; the one balancing the other. Man 
is self-transcending; the limits of the sub- 
conscious and the supra-conscious powers of 
his own being have not yet been reached. 
Prof. James, of Harvard, says psychology is 
now only where science was before Galileo 
and Bacon. Sociology has just come into 
the foreground; the problems of wealth and 
poverty, of war and peace, and the equalities 
of justice are coming into the great world- 
court of the higher hujnanity. In the larger 
light of the universal, religion will be less a 
matter of intellectual differences and disputa- 
tions, and more and more a glad trust and 



10 INTRODUCTION 

hope in the Infinite Goodness and a life of 
love to man and God. And, meantime, the 
work of discovery and invention will go for- 
ward in the world of material forces, and 
may far transcend the wonders of the pres- 
ent. The rays of the Sun may soon turn all 
the wheels of labor and commerce, and light 
and wartn the holmes of the world. 

Among the names of the "Pioneers of 
Progress" that of the author of this work 
should certainly have a place; and his many 
friends have so requested and urged, but 
Dr. Bland has just as positively protested. 
Somehow, this busy and self-forgetful life 
cannot bear the thought of being an auto- 
biographer; nor can his friends forego their 
reasonable request. 

As a solution of the problem, I have been 
asked to write an Introduction to the work, 
in which the life of the author will naturally 
call for at least some notice; and to this, be- 
ing old friends, he has consented. 

The parents of our author, Thomas and 
Sarah Thornton Bland, were members of a 
colony of North Carolina Quakers, who set- 
tled in Orange County, Indiana, in 1817. 
In 1829 they bought a tract of land in Greene 
County, near Bloomfield, the newly located 
capital, and built a log cabin in the thick 
forest; and there, this now distinguished son 
was born May 21, 1830; and there he lived 
the life of a pioneer farmer's boy till he was 



INTRODUCTION 11 

twenty years old. In his seventh year a log 
school house was built, in which he studied 
in winters and worked on the farm in the 
summers, until the age, of fifteen, when the 
father, thinking further education was not 
necessary for practical purposes, and need- 
ing his help all the year on the farm, the 
school days were ended. He had mastered 
Webster's spelling book, the Young and the 
English Readers, Pike's Arithmetic, and had 
read the Life of Dr. Franklin and the Bible; 
had almost memorized them. 

From very early years, he had a hungry 
mind; he borrowed from Judge Cavins and 
lawyer Rousseau and other scholars in the 
town, works of history; and these learned 
men, coming often to his cabin home as 
friends of the family, was a great inspiration 
to the young student. His daily labor was 
hard; but he found time to read tw 7 o hours 
each working day, and six hours on Sun- 
days. He studied English Grammar with- 
out a teacher, and also other subjects. He 
says "My mother sustained me by her love 
and her encouraging words gave me faith 
in myself and in the future." 

But changes came to this earnest and 
aspiring life. When he was twenty years of 
age the loving mother died; the faithful toil- 
ing father, wishing to provide homes for the 
three sons, and hoping that all would be 
farmers, sold the old home and moved to 



12 INTRODUCTION 

Illinois. Only the oldest son chose the life 
of the farmer. 

And now comes another change in the 
life of our author, which he must tell in his 
own characteristic way. "At the age of 
twenty-two I married a girl of eighteen, 
Miss Mary C. Davis, a native of Virginia. In 
1902 we celebrated our Golden Wedding. 
As wife, comrade, and co-worker she has 
been my faithful companion for more than 
fifty years. To her wise suggestions and 
kindly criticisms in the many fields of labor, 
I am indebted for much of the success 
achieved. She has journeyed with me from 
the realm of youthful ignorance and false be- 
liefs through the various stages of intel- 
lectual growth, and literary, scientific and 
philosophical development, to a place in the 
ranks of progress and reforim." 

Dr. Bland studied medicine after he was 
married, and on coming from college began 
practice in the village of Worthington, In- 
diana, six miles from where he was born. 
As a physician his studies were not limited 
to what is called medicine, but took the 
wider range of health reforms. He had 
been a student of phrenology from boyhood. 
He longed to reach and help the people in a 
larger way ; and hence took the platform as a 
lecturer on physiology and phrenology in 
their relations to the health of body and 
mind; his itinerary covered a number of the 



INTRODUCTION 13 

middle and western states and a few in the 
East. 

In 1864 he accepted a commission from 
Governor Morton, of Indiana, as special sur- 
geon in the army. Returning from that 
work he was joined by his wife, who had been 
for nearly two years studying in Dr. Jack- 
son's Health Institute, Dansville, New York, 
and they established, at Indianapolis, a liter- 
ary journal, "The Home Visitor." At the 
end of a successful year this was sold and the 
Northwestern, now Indiana Farmer, was 
founded. In 1868 they established the 
Ladies' Own Magazine, of which Mrs. Bland 
was Editor-in-Chief. In 1870 Dr. Bland 
published his first book, Farming as a Pro- 
fession, which had a large sale. Having 
sold the "Fanmer" they removed the mag- 
azine to Chicago in the spring of 1872, and 
in 1874 they removed it to New York City, 
where a year later it was sold and Mrs. Bland 
entered a medical college, completed her 
course, and took her degree as a Doctor of 
Medicine 

In April, 1878, the Drs. Bland located in 
Washington City, where for eighteen years 
the wife had a successful career both as a 
physician and a lecturer on health and re- 
lated subjects; the husband on occasion as- 
sisting as counsel. But his time was fully 
occupied with his literary work and as Cor- 
responding Secretary of the National Arbi- 



14 INTRODUCTION 

tration League and, also, of the Indian De- 
fense Association and as President of the 
Eclectic Medical Society of the District of 
Columbia. During his residence in Wash- 
ington Dr. Bland edited, for ten years, the 
Council Fire; for one year the True Com- 
monwealth. In 1879 Dr. Bland's Life of 
General Butler was issued by Lee & Shepard, 
of Boston. In 1880 appeared his Reign of 
Monopoly; in 1881 How to Grow Rich, an 
anti-monopoly brochure; in 1882 the Life of 
A. B. Meacham; in 1892 Esau, a political 
novel, and in 1894 his medical work was is- 
sued. 

Dr. and Mrs. Bland spent the three years 
froim 1895 to 1898 in Boston in professional, 
literary and reformatory work; and then re- 
moved to Chicago, where they now reside. 
In 1899 he was elected Secretary of the 
American Medical Union, which position he 
still holds. In 1902 his latest work, "In the 
World Celestial, " appeared and attracted 
quite wide attention, and its hold upon the 
public is still undiminished. 

In this passing sketch of the life of Dr. 
Bland one must be surprised at the large 
amount of work accomplished; and yet not 
the half appears. His other writings for the 
magazines and the general press would 
make more than fifty volumes the size of his 
books, and in addition to this he has de- 
livered hundreds of lectures upon various 



INTRODUCTION 15 

subjects. He has lived not in the quietude 
of seclusion but in public; with, and a part 
of the people; sharing in and trying to bear 
their burdens. Only as a life of love, and in 
the sharing or mutuality of love in return is 
such a life possible. 

As a reformer the work of Dr. Bland has 
been large, wise and helpful. Large, in that 
it has not been limited to any specialty; his 
wide vision has looked upon the whole field 
of the needs and sufferings of a world. 
Wise, because his judgment has been that 
of a well-balanced mind. Helpful, because 
his sympathies have been with the sufferers; 
he has not stood as one apart from them, 
and talked at them ; but has been as one with 
them who has known hard work; what it is 
to sweat in the field, and live in a cabin, and 
all his life to be comparatively poor. 

Looking at this life we can but be im- 
pressed with its noble and heroic qualities; 
its Quaker-like simplicity, purity and in- 
tegrity; and its moral heroism; and it is 
beautiful, Divine, to see this husband and 
wife, who have so long been one in thought 
and work, growing old in a love that is 
deeper, Diviner than was possible in the long 
ago, when together they essayed the task 
and journey of earth and time. Beautiful as 
they so joyfully toil on in the brighter hope 
of the blessed forever. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

I stood four hours listening with deep 
interest to a debate between Abraham Lin- 
coln and Stephen A. Douglas, at Charleston, 
111., in 1858. Those men were pitted against 
each other by their respective parties, Re- 
publican and Democratic, as champions of 
free soil and squatter soverenty. That de- 
bate and the six others held by those mental 
giants, was the prelude to the memorable 
campaign of i860. In that opening skirmish 
Lincoln won his spurs and achieved a fame 
that eclipsed the prestige of the veteran 
leaders of the young antislavery party, which 
had been born in 1856. The prize nominally 
at stake was a seat in the United States 
Senate, which Douglas then occupied and 
which Lincoln was supposed to covet. If 
he had any higher ambition Lincoln kept it 
concealed. Some men afterward thought 
they discovered in the following incident a 
still loftier ambition in Lincoln. The Re- 
publican leaders, Joseph Medill, Leonard 
Swett, Richard Oglesby and others were in 
consultation with Lincoln on the political 
program of the proposed debates. After his 
17 



18 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

admirers had substantially agreed upon a 
policy to be pursued, Lincoln threw them 
into a panic by saying: 

"Your proposed plan is too mild to suit 
me. I shall press the squatter soverenty is- 
sue and compel Douglas to defend his hybrid 
child or disown and abandon it." 

"Abe, if you do that Douglas will beat 
you for the United States Senate," said 
Medill, and Lincoln replied: 

"I know that, Joe, as well as you do, but 
it will make it impossible for him to be 
President of the United States." 

"But, Abe," replied his friendly adviser, 
"you are not a candidate for President, but 
for the Senate." 

"I understand your position and appre- 
ciate your view of things," replied Lincoln, 
"but I am after bigger game." 

The sequel proved that both Medill and 
Lincoln were right from their standpoints. 
It is highly improbable that Lincoln thought 
of himself as a possible candidate for Presi- 
dent in i860. His purpose, it is generally 
believed, was to sacrifice his possibility of a 
seat in the Senate upon his belief that to 
elect Douglas President would be to imperil 
the cause of liberty. In his reply to Douglas 
at Charleston he said: 

"My friend, Judge Douglas, has decidedly 
the advantage of me, he is an avowed candi- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 19 

date for President; in his rotund and smil- 
ing face the politicians see possible cabinet 
positions, foreign appointments, postoffices, 
etc., etc., while in my homely old phiz they 
see no such possibilities." 

The manner of saying this, a manner pe- 
culiarly Lincolnish, gave it a pith and pun- 
gency I have never found in the speech of 
any other man. His arguments were strong, 
but their strength was not all in the logic, 
though he was a powerful logician. There 
was a. quiet and peculiar humor in his illus- 
trations and his manner of speech such as I 
have never observed in that of any other 
orator. To illustrate as best I may, I quote: 
"The Judge's argument is about as thin as 
homeopathic soup, made from the shadow of 
a pigeon that had starved to death/' 

Only those who heard Lincoln utter this 
can fully appreciate its force. The shout 
that went up from the listening thousands 
made the leaves of the trees tremble like the 
foliage of the aspen. 

My personal knowledge of Lincoln was 
limited, but from the lips of public men inti- 
mately associated with him I have heard 
many an anecdote which I stored in my 
memory. 

Schuyler Colfax told me some amusing 
stories of the great emancipator. "He was," 
said Colfax, "a great admirer of Artemus 



20 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Ward and of Petroleum V. Nasby. During 
the dark days of the War of the Rebellion, 
when the responsibilities of his office seemed 
to be more than he could bear, he found 
temporary relief in reading selections from 
that prince of humorists, Ward, and the let- 
ters of Rev. Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby. 
He would sometimes prelude the most seri- 
ous cabinet discussions by reading one of 
the great showman's funniest stories, or the 
latest fulminations of Nasby hurled at his 
administration of affairs. Once when I called 
upon him he asked me if I had read Nasby's 
latest letter. 'Of course I have,' I answered. 
'Everybody reads them.' 'Do you know him 
personally?' 'Yes.' 'Well, the next time 
you meet him in Washington bring him to 
see me.' 

"A few days later I met Nasby on Penn- 
sylvania avenue and told him that the Presi- 
dent wanted to meet him. 'No he don't, 
after what I have said about him.' 'Oh, he 
reads between the lines and understands you, 
and the quaint humor of your letters does 
him good; it helps to lift the pressure of his 
overburdened mind and heart.' 

"Lincoln received us in his private room, 
on entering which I said, 'Mr. President, I 
have the honor and pleasure of introducing 
to you my esteemed friend, Rev. Petroleum 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 21 

V. Nasby.' Extending both of his hands, 
which Nasby grasped, Lincoln said: 

" 'Mr. Nasby, I am very glad to see you ; 
I read your letters with great pleasure. I 
envy you your wonderful gift of humor; 
indeed, I would rather be able to write as 
you do than to be President of the United 
States.' 

"Then looking his distinguished visitor 
over from head to foot, he asked: 'What 
on earth is it about you that makes you so 
all-fired funny?' " 

Lord Hartington of England, then a 
young man fresh from Oxford, visited this 
country during the Civil War, and the British 
minister, Sir Edward Thornton, introduced 
him to the President. Old Abe, as he was 
familiarly called, took the measure of this 
young sprig of English nobility, and sized 
him up as a coxcomb, a type of humanity 
that he held in supreme contempt. His 
sense of humor dominated, for the moment, 
his diplomatic courtesy, and on the young 
man being presented he grasped his hand 
with exuberant cordiality, and in a manner 
and voice peculiarly his own he said: 

"My Lord Hartington, I am delighted to 
meet you, and I am very sure never to for- 
get your name, for it rhymes so admirably 
with our Mrs. Partington." 

Mr. Lincoln was a man of moods. He 



22 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

had fits of melancholy that at times bordered 
on despair, but if at such times a jovial 
friend would tell him a funny story or say 
something which would remind him of 
something humorous, he would laugh off 
his fit of blues. His wit has been obscured 
by his humor, but it was of a high order and 
it was spontaneous, as well as keen. A good 
illustration is found in the following anec- 
dote: 

A group of lawyers in the public room of 
a village tavern were amusing themselves 
by jokes on each other. Douglas and Lin- 
coln were of the party. One lawyer started 
it and others joined in, chafing Douglas 
about his short legs. Lincoln took no part 
in this, till one of the jokers said, "I think 
Abe's legs are as much too long as Steve's 
are too short." This shot was meant to force 
Lincoln to defend himself, but it failed of its 
object. Abe was apparently absorbed in 
some deep mental problem which rendered 
him oblivious to the controversy which 
raged around him. Finally a member of the 
group fired this question at him: 

"Abe, tell us how long you think a man's 
legs ought to be?" 

"Well, I have never given that subject 
much thought, but it strikes me that they 
ought to be long enough to reach from his 
body to the ground." 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 23 

On one occasion General Grant was being 
criticized by a member of Lincoln's cabinet 
quite severely. "Why," said he, "I have it 
on what I deem good authority that Grant 
is a very intemperate man. In fact, that he 
sometimes gets drunk." 

"Do you know the brand of liquor he 
drinks ?" Lincoln wore a sober face as he 
asked that question, and the accuser of 
Grant answered as soberly: "No, I do not; 
but what has the quality of the liquor got to 
do with it?" 

"To my mind, it has everything to do 
with it. I should like to order a few bar- 
rels of the same kind of liquor that Grant 
drinks for my other generals." 

On one occasion a soldier had been sen- 
tenced to be shot for the crime of cowardice 
shown on the field of battle. His mother 
appealed to the President for a pardon. The 
appeal touched the great sympathetic heart 
of Lincoln and he resolved to pardon that 
soldier. But official courtesy required that 
he refer the case to the Secretary of War. 
He gave the mother a letter to Secretary 
Stanton, in which he recommended favor- 
able consideration of the case. The great 
war secretary read the President's letter 
and without a word he drew a line across it 
with a pen dipped in red ink and handed it 
back to the sorrow-stricken mother, who 



24 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

carried it to the President, with conflicting 
emotions of hope and fear. She did not 
understand the meaning of the red cross, till 
Lincoln told her that it meant that the 
secretary had refused to recommend a par- 
don. "You see, madam, that I have very 
little influence with this administration, but," 
he added, "in this case I shall act on my 
own judgment and pardon your son with- 
out the recommendation of the Secretary of 
War. The poor boy probably has a brave 
and patriotic heart and head, but a pair of 
cowardly legs which ran away with him." 
The mother w r as so grateful for the par- 
don of her son that she could readily forgive 
the President's humorous reason for grant- 
ing it. 



ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 

Gen. U. S. Grant was a native of Ohio. 
After graduating from West Point Military 
Academy he entered the United States Army 
as second lieutenant. His first active mili- 
tary service was in the Mexican war, where 
he was promoted to the rank of captain. 
He afterward resigned his commission and 
located near St. Louis, as a farmer. Not 
being very successful in that business, he 
became a clerk in the office of his brother 
Orville, who owned a tannery in Galena, 111. 
He was filling that useful position when, in 
1 86 1, the Civil War began. In July of that 
year he went to Springfield with a letter of 
introduction to Governor Yates from ex- 
Governor Washburn, who believed that he 
could be of service to the nation as an officer 
in the army. Governor Yates introduced 
him to his adjutant-general, Thomas Mather, 
with a recommendation that he utilize his 
services. Mather asked Grant: 
"What can you do in the army?" 
"I can organize and command an army." 
"The h — 1 you can," responded Mather. 
"Well, there is an unorganized mob down 

25 



26 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

at Mattoon, known as the Twenty-first Regi- 
ment of Illinois Infantry. I will give you a 
commission as captain and mustering officer 
and you may go down there and see if you 
can bring order out of the chaos that reigns 
in Camp Cunningham/' 

Captain Good of Decatur had been elected 
by the boys as their colonel, but before a 
commission was issued to him his men de- 
cided that he was a failure, and a petition, 
signed by over two-thirds of the rank and 
file of the regiment, was forwarded to the 
Governor, praying him not to commission 
Good. This was the state of things when 
Captain Grant reported to Colonel Good for 
duty. Good was a politician, so he sought 
by flattery to secure Grant's influence in 
his behalf with the Governor. The camp 
had been named for Mattoon's most hon- 
ored citizen, Hon. James Cunningham. 
Good issued an order changing it to Camp 
Grant. This insult to "Uncle Jimmie Cun- 
ningham" incensed every citizen and soldier 
of that section. It failed of the purpose 
Colonel Good had in view. Governor Yates 
sent Captain Grant a colonel's commission 
and assigned him to the command of the 
Twenty-first Infantry. Under his wise and 
strict discipline, what General Mather had. 
styled a mob became in a brief time a model 
regiment. I had assisted somewhat in re- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 27 

cruiting that regiment and I was in Mattoon 
when Captain Grant arrived. I am there- 
fore enabled to speak of the genesis of his 
career as a soldier in the Civil War from 
personal observation. I was with his com- 
mand when, in January, 1862, he made his 
fa;mous reconnoissance in force in Kentucky, 
preparatory to his attack upon Fort Donel- 
son. I did not meet him again until after 
the close of the war. I attended the first 
reception given him at Cincinnati, when the 
world was ringing with his praise. He 
greeted me cordially and introduced me to 
his wife, whom I found to be a very pleasant 
woman. The renowned hero of many bril- 
liant achievements was, to all appearances. 
as modest and companionable as when he 
was only a captain and mustering officer. 
He was a man of few words, yet he was not 
reticent to an offensive degree. He simply 
did not use a surplusage of words in his pub- 
lic utterances or private conversation. He 
was as modest as he was reticent. His deeds 
spoke for him, but of these he not only 
never boasted, but he appeared to be en- 
tirely unconscious of having done anything 
but his plain duty, as the humblest soldier 
did his. That he had a great heart is proven 
by his fidelity to his friends, which has be- 
come proverbial. He gave Sherman and 
other generals all the credit that was their 



28 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

due, even at the expense of his own fame. 
His magnani'mity to General Lee and his 
command, when at Appomattox the general- 
in-chief of the Confederate Army tendered 
his sword to General Grant in token of final 
surrender, goes far toward proving Grant a 
great-hearted man, as well as a wise states- 
man. His generosity on that occasion did 
much towards softening sectional animosity 
in the hearts of the southern people, and 
helped make it possible for them to again 
fraternize with the people of the North. 

In his treatment of his soldiers, and the 
prisoners who fell into his hands, General 
Grant was humane to an exceptional degree. 
A brother of my wife, Lieut. B. F. Davis of 
the Twenty-first Illinois, said to me that at 
first the boys did not like Grant, and that 
the Governor was roundly denounced for 
putting him over them as their colonel. 
They had not been accustomed to strict 
military discipline. But after we got into 
the field and had been in an engagement 
with the foe, they could see that the severe 
discipline they had complained of was just 
what they had needed to make good soldiers 
of them. He became the idol of his men. 
During his reconnoissance in 1862 a private 
in the Forty-eighth Illinois Infantry slept 
at his post one night while on picket duty. 
The relief officer brought him in as a pris- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 29 

oner and reported to the commander of the 
regiment, Colonel Haney. The penalty for 
such an offense was death. I called to see 
the prisoner, whom I had known before he 
enlisted, and asked him why he had slept 
while on guard. He replied, "My beautiful 
wife and my two lovely children have all 
died since I left them to fight for my coun- 
try. When I learned that they were danger- 
ously ill I asked for a furlough that I might 
see them once more in this world. My ap- 
plication was refused on the ground that the 
army was about starting on this campaign. 
I am crazed with grief and I want to die." 

I told his story to General McClernand, 
his brigade commander, and said to him: 
"General, I beg to give it as my opinion 
that the poor fellow is insane." The General 
replied, "I will report the case to General 
Grant, telling the story as you have told it 
to me, and give him your opinion, as a 
medical man, of the case." 

The result was that the heartbroken sol- 
dier was discharged on the ground of in- 
sanity instead of being shot to death. About 
this time I called one morning at the home 
of a farmer, in whose field the army had 
camped the night before. The purpose of 
my call was to get a hot breakfast. The 
family consisted of the farmer, his wife, one 
unmarried daughter and a daughter-in-law. 



30 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

The old man wore a sad countenance and 
the women were all crying. On inquiry, I 
learned that the only son of the family, hus- 
band of the daughter-in-law, had been cap- 
tured by Grant's scouts and was then a 
prisoner in our camp. They felt sure that 
he would be hung, though they insisted 
that he had not been guilty of any act of 
treason or disloyalty. I set their fears at 
rest by explaining that our scouts were un- 
der orders to arrest and hold as prisoners all 
young men of the country to prevent the 
possibility of their carrying news of the 
movements of the army to the enemy at 
Columbus, or Fort Donelson, and that the 
young man would be treated well and re- 
leased within a week. My reward came 
quickly in the form of an excellent break- 
fast consisting of fried chicken, soda biscuit 
and coffee with real cream. I offered to 
pay for my breakfast in silver coin, but was 
not allowed to do so. I said to my host: 
"We encamped on your farm last night and 
made pretty free with your fence rails in 
building fires to cook our meals and warm 
ourselves, and we used about all your hay 
and corn to feed our horses." 

"Yes, I am ruined, but if we are not all 
hung we will live somehow and be thankful 
that it is no worse. " 

"How much is your bill for what the army 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 31 

has used, belonging to you?" "Oh, I don't 
know, and it ain't worth while to count it 
up, for it is gone and counting it up won't 
bring it back/' "Do you think that $500 
would pay for what we have taken from 
you?" "Oh, yes, I would be entirely satis- 
fied with that much." "Well, go with me to 
see the General." Proceeding to General Mc- 
Clernand's tent, I said, "General, this is Mr. 
Simpson, owner of the farm on which we 
are encamped. He has just given me a good 
breakfast and I have had a pleasant talk 
with him. I am convinced that whatever 
his political views may be, neither he nor 
his family have committed any act of treason 
to the United States. I have brought him 
to you because I knew that it was General 
Grant's policy to pay for forage taken from 
non-combatants." General M. asked, "How 
much does Uncle Sam owe you for the dam- 
age done by his boys in blue?" "The doctor 
thinks that $500 would be about right," he 
replied. "But what do you think?" "Well, 
I'd be satisfied with that." "I will report 
your claim to General Grant and have no 
doubt that you will get a voucher for it." 
Within an hour the old Kentuckian had a 
voucher for $500 in greenback currency. 

General Grant's life has been written so 
often and by so many men that I can only 
glean the field for such incidents as other 



32 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

biographers have not included in their 
voluminous books. From my personal 
knowledge of him, as well as from his his- 
tory, I am strongly impressed with his 
resemblance, as a soldier, to General Wash- 
ington. The strong characteristics of both 
Washington and Grant were firmness and 
poise. They were both endowed also with 
a keen intuition, called by phrenologists the 
organ of human nature, which enabled them 
to wisely choose men fitted for positions of 
trust and responsibility. General Grant's 
success as a military man was due, in very 
large measure, to his ability to judge of 
men's fitness for subordinate positions. His 
success in selecting public officials to fill 
executive offices, when he was President of 
the nation, was not conspicuous. This is to 
be accounted for by the fact that he had not 
been trained in civil life, and in .part by the 
fact that a President is a party chief, as well 
as chief magistrate of the nation. He must 
select officials from his own party, and 
largely on the opinion and advice of the 
leading men of his party. I am impressed 
to tell an anecdote which is to President 
Grant's credit, showing, as it does, that he 
kicked out of the party traces on occasion. 
I got the story from Hon. John Haley, dele- 
gate in Congress from Idaho when Grant 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 33 

was President, and I give it as nearly as I 
can in Haley's words: 

"I called on Grant and told him that the 
postmaster of Boise City had farmed the 
office out to a Democratic citizen, who was 
doing all the work for half the pay, while the 
official postmaster lived off the other half, 
without doing anything to earn it. I have 
here a petition signed by a majority of the 
voters of Boise asking you to give the office 
to the man who is doing the work." 

"Mr. Haley, this is a Republican adminis- 
tration, and Republicans are entitled to the 
offices, on the Jacksonian Democratic pol- 
icy that to the victors belong the spoils; but 
when I appoint a man to office I expect him 
to do his duty honestly and faithfully. It 
appears that this man is not doing his duty, 
but is hiring a Democrat to do it for him. 
I shall give the office to the man who is 
doing the work, and I will do it at once." 

That President Grant made mistakes no 
one will dispute, but that he ever knowingly 
did an act prejudicial to the public service 
no one who knew him will believe* 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Wendell Phillips was born in Boston in 
1809. His ancestors were among the best 
people of that city — wealthy, talented and 
cultured. His name is a combination of the 
family names of his mother and father. He 
was educated in Harvard College in both 
literature and law. He was a rising young 
attorney, when in 1837 he made a speech in 
Faneuil Hall which blasted his fame and 
drove from him all clients who could pay 
fees to an attorney. 

A meeting had been called to condemn 
the assassination of Lovejoy at Alton, 
111., by a proslavery mob from Missouri. 
Mr. Phillips and his young wife occupied 
seats in the gallery of that famous Temple 
of Liberty. The resolutions expressing the 
views of those who had called the meeting 
were read, when the attorney-general of 
Massachusetts, who out of courtesy had 
been given a seat on the platform, arose 
and launched into a speech denouncing 
Lovejoy as a political firebrand who de- 
served his fate. The applause which punctu- 
ated this barbarous utterance of this cham- 
34 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 35 

pion of slavery and assassination showed 
clearly that unless this recreant son of the 
old Bay State should find a champion of 
freedom worthy of his steel, who could and 
would answer him with equal eloquence, the 
meeting would fail of its purpose. Mrs. 
Phillips believed that her husband could, by 
throwing himself into the breach, turn the 
tide and save the day. She said to him: 
"Wendell, you must answer that man. Just 
as soon as he closes you must open on him 
with your whole battery of truth, logic and 
eloquence." Wendell Phillips adored his 
beautiful, talented and cultured wife. Her 
wish and word were to him law. He was in 
full sympathy with the resolutions denounc- 
ing the killing of the champion of freedom, 
and his whole being was filled with righteous 
wrath. But on giving me an account of that 
memorable meeting he said: 

"I doubt if I should have had the auda- 
cious courage to make a speech if my wife 
had not urged me to it. Her faith in my 
powers gave me courage to try them." 

That speech was one of the most famous 
that ever echoed from the walls of that 
temple in which Adams and Otis and other 
great champions of liberty had denounced 
tyranny and plead for the rights of man. 
The friends of freedom were enthused to the 
highest degree, while the proslavery element 



36 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

of the audience were highly indignant. The 
first applauded, the others hissed. When 
Mr. Phillips characterized the attorney-gen- 
eral as a recreant son of Massachusetts a 
man in the audience sprang to his feet and 
in thunderous tones demanded that he take 
that sentence back. With his characteristic 
calmness of manner, so well known to those 
who have listened to his speeches, Mr. Phil- 
lips said: 

"No, I shall not take back a sentence 
which my deliberate judgment fully ap- 
proves." 

A mighty volume of applause greeted this 
brave reply; when it subsided Mr. Phillips 
proceeded with his speech, and when it was 
finished he had won a forensic triumph of 
which any young orator might be proud, but 
his career as a lawyer was ended. Hence- 
forth the blue-blooded, wealthy and classic 
young attorney was classed with the despised 
abolitionists. Like the Nazarene Prophet, 
he was repudiated by the rich and great, 
and must find in the common people his 
associates. He accepted his fate without a 
murmur. In fact, he found among the com- 
mon people and the ostracized prophets of 
freedom more congenial companionship and 
fraternal sympathy than he had ever found 
among his former aristocratic associates. 

Wendell Phillips was an aristocratic Dem- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 37 

ocrat. Perhaps it would be more proper to 
class him as a democratic aristocrat. He 
was the best representative of both of those 
classes that I ever knew. My personal ac- 
quaintance with that great man began in 
1866. I had heard him speak on the labor 
problem in Indianapolis, where I then lived. 
On the following morning I called upon him 
at his hotel. Handing him my card, I said, 
"Mr. Phillips, I have called to ask permis- 
sion to present to you some criticisms upon 
your lecture of last night." With a pleasant 
smile he said, "Nothing could give me 
more pleasure than to listen to your criti- 
cisms." Thus put at my ease, I presented 
my objections to his plan for righting the 
wrongs under which the working classes 
suffer. He listened with deep attention till 
I closed, when, laying his right hand upon 
my knee, and looking me in the eye, he 
responded : 

"I perceive that it is impossible for you 
and I to differ, for we are both honest men 
and thinkers." 

"Why, Mr. Phillips, I thought I had dif- 
fered from you somewhat." 

"Oh, our difference is a mere matter of 
method, not of principle. You are an evo- 
lutionist, while I am a revolutionist. I am 
glad you called, however. I am made the 
richer by your acquaintance and your 



38 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

criticism. I will revise that lecture in some 
points along lines suggested by you." 

Our next meeting was in his home in 
Boston, an old-fashioned, very plain brick 
house in Essex street. His parlor, as he 
called it, where he received me, was a second 
floor room furnished in a style severely plain. 
My call was a social one and our conversa- 
tion need not be reported. 

In 1876 Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, 
visited this country, and when in Boston he 
expressed a desire to meet John G. Whittier, 
William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phil- 
lips. Mrs. Sargeant invited those distin- 
guished men to meet the Emperor in her 
parlors. I read a report of that meeting in 
a daily paper, and on being in Boston soon 
afterward I asked Mr. Phillips to give me 
a detailed account of it. He said: "Dom 
Pedro had great admiration for Whittier, 
whose poems he had translated into the 
Portuguese language. During the afternoon 
a medical society then in session in the city 
called to see the Emperor. Mrs. Sargeant 
told them that he was engaged with friends 
and she could not admit them without his 
consent. He said to her: 'Let them come 
up if you do not object.' He greeted the 
doctors most cordially, saying, 'I am glad 
to see you, gentlemen. I am myself a doc- 
tor — a doctor of state.' 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 39 

"When the time came to end the inter- 
view with the three of us, we started down- 
stairs together, and the Emperor threw his 
left arm around Whittier and literally car- 
ried him to the foot of the stairs, when he 
stooped and kissed him on the forehead." 

Mr. Phillips included in his narrative some 
pretty compliments Dom Pedro paid to 
Whittier and Garrison, but said not a word 
about any compliments to himself. "Your 
report is very interesting," I said, "but it is 
incomplete." "In what respect?" he asked. 
"Why, you have not told me what the Em- 
peror said to you." "Oh, ask Whittier or 
Garrison about that," he replied. 

I met Garrison subsequently, but forgot to 
ask him about that notable meeting. 

In 1875 Col. A. B. Meacham of Oregon, 
chairman of the Modoc Peace Commission 
in 1873, an d survivor of the massacre in the 
lava beds, visited Boston to bring out his 
book, "Wigwam and Warpath." He was a 
famous hero, but it was not for that reason 
that Wendell Phillips extended to him a 
brother's welcome and paid the trustees of 
the old Park Church $50 for Colonel 
Meacham to lecture in. It was because 
Meacham was telling the Indian's side of the 
story. Mr. Phillips presided over the meet- 
ing, introducing the speaker in a most elo- 
quent and complimentary manner. 



40 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

One morning, soon after his bock came 
out, Colonel Meacham met Mr. Phillips on 
Tremont street. Cordially greeting the 
Colonel, Mr. Phillips took from his vest 
pocket a roll of bills, and, dividing them into 
two rolls, he pressed one into the Colonel's 
pocket, saying in explanation of the act: 
"I made a speech at Salem last night on the 
Indian and the committee gave me forty dol- 
lars for it. As I got most of it out of your 
book, I think you are entitled to half." 

I called on Mr. Phillip's one day in 1876 
to ask him for some letters of introduction 
to wealthy friends of his who would be 
likely to contribute to a fund for the benefit 
of the Modoc heroine, Winema. He wrote 
six letters, which he handed to me. On look- 
ing them over I found a check for twenty- 
five dollars, which I handed back to him, 
saying, "I cannot accept any money for 
Winema from you, for you have already con- 
tributed your generous share toward her 
support." He tore the check up, dropping 
the pieces into the waste-basket. He then 
filled up another check, which he held to- 
ward me, saying: "Take that and send it 
to Winema if you don't want to quarrel with 
me." That check was for fifty dollars. 

Wendell Phillips was not only the soul of 
honor, but of generosity. I am in possession 
of a store of anecdotes which prove this. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 41 

Hon. A. B. Brown, a life-long friend of Mr. 
Phillips, told me this story ; "I met Phillips 
on State street, Boston, one day when I was 
almost in despair. I was about to lose my 
home for want of one thousand dollars. I 
had just come out of a bank' where I had 
hoped to get it, but had been refused. I 
was blue and my face showed it. Mr. Phil- 
lips asked if I was in trouble. 'I am some- 
what financially embarrassed,' I replied. 

" 'How much do you need?' 

" 'About a thousand dollars/ 

" 'Wait here a moment/ he said. He then 
walked across the street and entered a bank. 
In a very brief time he returned and handed 
me a roll of bills. I could scarcely command 
my voice to thank him. On counting the 
roll I found it to contain twelve hundred dol- 
lars. When a few months later I handed 
him the same sum, he counted it deliberately, 
and, placing a thousand dollars of it in his 
desk, he handed me two hundred, saying, 
'Give that to your wife as a token of my 
esteem and friendship/ n 

Wendell Phillips inherited a substantial 
fortune. From 1837 to the close of the 
Civil War, 1865, he gave his time and talents 
to the cause of the freedom of the negro 
without monetary reward. After the negro 
had been set free he championed the cause 
of the white workingman and the Indian, 



42 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

giving an occasional lecture on literary top- 
ics. He was now not only famous, but re- 
spectable. Public opinion had been radically 
changed, and the matchless eloquence of 
Wendell Phillips was appreciated. 

In 1878 I asked him how much he got 
for his lectures. "That depends. For my 
lecture on the 'Lost Arts' I get two hun- 
dred dollars. When I lecture on the labor 
problem I usually receive one hundred dol- 
lars. But when they will let me talk for the 
poor Indian I ask for no pay. If I get any- 
thing it is all right; if not, I am content." 

In 1876, Colonel Meacham's health hav- 
ing failed from the effects of injuries received 
in the lava beds and overwork, Mr. Phillips 
wrote me to New York, where I then lived, 
that if I would arrange for it he would give 
a lecture in that city for Meacham's benefit. 
I accepted, with thanks. A furious wind and 
rain storm raged during the evening of the 
lecture, hence the audience was not large. 
At the close Mr. Phillips said, "I fear you 
did not get more than expense out of this 
lecture." "No," I replied, "there will be 
very few dollars left for Meacham." "Well, 
I meant that he should have a benefit and he 
shall." He then handed me his check for 
one hundred dollars, to be added to the box 
receipts. 

No poor person, whether white or black, 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 43 

ever appealed to him in vain for help that he 
could render. His heart, his purse and his 
home were always open to the poor and the 
oppressed. But the mere curiosity seeker 
found him the most difficult man in Boston 
to get access to. I was sitting in his parlor 
one day discussing public questions with him 
when the hired girl brought him a card. 

"Who is he?" asked Mr. Phillips. "Oh, 
there is a party of ladies and gentlemen 
from California who say they have called to 
pay their respects to you." 

"Tell them I am engaged and cannot see 
them." 

I arose to go, and said, "Mr. Phillips, 
I have already remained longer than I had 
intended to, and I will not keep you from 
other callers." 

"Sit down. I want to talk to you further. 
Those people have nothing in common with 
me. Their call is doubtless prompted by 
curiosity, and I don't mean to be catalogued 
among the curiosities of Boston." 

On calling upon the editor of the Boston 
Post on one occasion, I was surprised to see 
above his desk a large likeness of Wendell 
Phillips. I said, "The Reverend Jasper may 
be in error about the sun moving, but he 
could say with truth, 'the world do move.' '' 

"What special evidence have you of that 
fact?" asked the editor. 



44 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Pointing to the portrait, I said, "There is 
the proof — a picture of Wendell Phillips in 
the sanctum of a democratic editor." 

"Oh, we all honor Wendell Phillips for his 
nobility of character, and we are proud of 
him as the world's greatest orator." 

In 1883 Hon. J. Hendricks McLane of 
South Carolina, while on a visit to Boston, 
asked me to introduce him to Wendell Phil- 
lips, as he had a great desire to meet him. 
I arranged for a meeting between those two 
representative men, and was present during 
the two hours they spent in exchanging 
anecdotes and reminiscences of ante-bellum 
days. They fraternized most cordially and 
laughed heartily at each other's stories. Mr. 
McLane said afterward that in all his life he 
had never met a more delightful man than 
Wendell Phillips. "But," he added, "the com- 
mon people of the South before the war be- 
lieved that Wendell Phillips and Lloyd Gar- 
rison were hideous monsters." The war not 
only emancipated the negro, but it freed the 
ignorant whites of the South from preju- 
dices inseparable from slavery. 

My last meeting with Wendell Phillips 
occurred in November, 1883. His health 
had visibly declined since the last time I had 
seen him. I had a strong impression that I 
should never again meet him on the earth. 
I was also impressed that he felt that this 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 45 

would be our last meeting. He was in a 
tender mood and his talk was chiefly remi- 
niscent. He spoke of our first meeting, of 
my kindly criticism, and of our never having 
had any disagreement worth noting during 
all the years we had been co-workers in the 
fields of reform. When I gave him my hand 
in farewell, I said, "God bless you, Mr. 
Phillips; may you live forever/' 

"I expect to, but not in this world," he 
replied. 

His last letter to me was written less than 
a fortnight before his death. It is among 
my most sacred mementos. 

On Decoration Day, in 1885, a Wendell 
Phillips memorial meeting was held in 
Faneuil Hall. I was in Boston at the time, 
and had the honor to be one of the speakers 
who paid tribute to that great and good 
man. 



LUCRETIA MOTT. 

My first meeting with Lucretia Mott oc- 
curred in 1876. The Pennsylvania Peace 
Society held a meeting during the Centen- 
nial celebration of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Lucretia Mott was the president, 
and, although then 83 years of age, she pre- 
sided with marked ability and with that gen- 
tle and cultured manner so characteristic of 
her in all the relations of life. I was familiar 
with her history and was prepared to ad- 
mire her, but on becoming personally ac- 
quainted with her my admiration was greatly 
increased. "She is perfectly angelic," was 
my wife's tribute to her after we had seen 
her preside over a session of the convention 
and had been introduced to her after ad- 
journment. "I fully endorse your estimate," 
I replied. 

Goodness is an essential element of great- 
ness in man or woman. One can be good 
without being great, but not great without 
being good. Lucretia Mott was one of the 
greatest women that this continent has pro- 
duced. Some have been more famous, be- 
cause their spheres of action were more 
46 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 47 

conspicuous, but fame and greatness are not 
necessarily united. Not infrequently per- 
sons achieve temporary fame only to sink 
into the tomb of oblivion soon after the 
echoes of the world's plaudits die away, 
while others for whom their own age were 
very sparing of its praise become immortal 
in the annals of time, their fame increasing 
as the centuries pass, and the world grows 
older and wiser. The humble disciple of the 
Nazarene and follower of George Fox, Lu- 
cretia Mott, was not born to die. The world 
will not, cannot, forget her. 

This eminent philanthropist and reformer 
was born in 1793 on the island of Nantucket. 
She came of Quaker parentage on both 
sides. She was mainly raised in Boston, but 
finished her school course in a Quaker board- 
ing school in Dutchess County, New York. 
She was married in 1810 to James Mott, a 
young Quaker merchant of the city of New 
York. Her husband meeting with financial 
disaster during the War of 1812-15, Lucretia 
turned school teacher to help support her- 
self and family. This was in Philadelphia, 
to which city her father and her husband had 
removed and entered into business together. 
Lucretia liked, to teach, for she loved chil- 
dren, and it was the study of their guileless 
characters that caused her to reject from her 
creed the dogma of total human depravity. 



48 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Having now begun to exercise her inalien- 
able right to think for herself, she let her 
mind stray into other forbidden paths. Ere 
long she became one of the most noted and 
successful reformers of her age and country. 
At the early age of twenty-five, Lucretia be- 
came a minister in the Society of Friends 
and preached with great acceptance for some 
years. But being impressed to preach doc- 
trines at variance with those accepted by her 
church, the leading members labored with 
her, but finding her possessed with the cour- 
age of her convictions, they pronounced her 
a heretic and forbade her continuing to 
preach. She clung to her birthright and 
plead her cause by saying that the highest 
evidence of a sound faith is a good life. As 
no charge could be brought against her save 
that she believed and preached a heretical 
doctrine that man is inherently good and 
that we must rely upon a virtuous life in- 
stead of faith in dogmas for salvation. 
Lucretia and her husband were among the 
earliest antislavery advocates in this country, 
and for more than forty years his money and 
her eloquence were important factors in the 
antislavery movement. The black slaves' 
wrongs did not monopolize her time and 
talents, but she devoted her energies among 
the very earliest in the cause of the emanci- 
pation of woman from servitude to man, and 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 49 

the effort to give her equal rights and privi- 
leges with him. 

She held it to be a great injustice to 
women teachers, that for the same work 
they should be paid only half as much as 
men received. As early as 1840 she became 
prominently known as a public advocate of 
woman's rights. About this time she was 
sent as delegate to the World's Antislavery 
Convention in London. Her reputation as 
an able and eloquent antislavery reformer 
had preceded her, and personally she was 
treated with great consideration, but the 
convention refused to receive her as a dele- 
gate because she was a woman. Lucretia 
was as indignant as a woman of her religious 
faith and sweet disposition could get to be, 
and she finally resolved to call a woman's 
convention in her own country and force the 
issue of the equality of rights for the two 
sexes. 

On her return, her husband, her sister, 
Mrs. Martha Wright of Albany, N. Y., 
Mrs. C. H. Nichols of New York and 
others, on being consulted by her, sym- 
pathized with her proposed action. In 1848 
a convention was called to meet at Seneca 
Falls, N. Y. James Mott presided, and 
Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Thomas and 
Mary McClintock, Ansel Bascomb, Catha- 
rine Stebbins and Henry Post were the 



50 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

speakers. The convention was a success in 
creating an interest in the public mind. The 
vulgar people laughed and the ignorant 
press ridiculed the newborn movement, but 
they failed to stop it. Only a little more 
than half a century has passed into history 
since that convention was held, yet the 
woman's rights question is treated respect- 
fully by the press, the people and the pulpit, 
and its pioneer advocates are highly honored. 
Lucretia Mott devoted the riper years of 
her long life mainly to the cause of peace 
between nations. It was in this work that 
we met thirty years ago, and from then till 
she passed to the higher life we were co- 
workers and friends. I was the correspond- 
ing secretary of the National Arbitration 
League of America, an organization which 
was not so extreme in its principles as the 
American Peace Society or the Universal 
Peace Union, but it co-operated with them. 
The last time that I saw Lucretia Mott she 
was presiding over a peace society in Phila- 
delphia. A letter was handed her and upon 
opening it she found a five-dollar bill, the 
annual contribution of her son-in-law, Ed- 
ward M. Davis. The letter read : 

"Dear Mother: 

"I believe that war is an important factor 
in human progress, but there are other fac- 
tors, the advocacy of peace at any price be- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 51 

ing one of them. I therefore send you a 
small contribution toward the expense of the 
work you are at the head of.'' 

On reading the letter to the convention 
Lucretia said: 

"Edward is a good man, but he is not a 
Christian in the full and true sense of that 
title, yet this letter proves that he is nearer 
the Kingdom of Heaven than many who 
profess to be disciples of the Prince of 
Peace." I knew Edward M. Davis and can 
sincerely endorse that tribute to him. 

In a sermon on marriage, Robert Collyer 
told this beautiful story: 

"My highly esteemed countryman and 
friend, Edward M. Davis, while on his way 
to America from England when but a youth, 
dreamed a dream or saw a vision, as to 
which it was you are at liberty to have your 
own opinion. In his dream the ship reached 
the good city of Penn. He disembarked 
and, strolling up a street, he entered a 
Quaker meeting-house, and among the silent 
worshipers one face attracted his special at- 
tention. That face was angelic in its loveli- 
ness, though encased in a Quaker bonnet. 
He resolved to win and wed that demure 
Quaker girl. On landing in Philadelphia 
he recognized the wharf as the one at which 
in his dream he had landed. He strolled up 
a street which seemed familiar to him till he 



52 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

came to a meeting-house that he had seen in 
his dream. He entered and there before him 
sat the girl in a Quaker bonnet whose face 
had won his heart in midocean. He fol- 
lowed her, at a respectful distance, to her 
home. Asking a passerby who lived in that 
house, where he had seen her enter, he 
was told that James Mott and his wife 
Lucretia lived there. The young man 
thanked his unknown informant and then 
sought a lodging-place. Within a year from 
that time he and that Quaker girl were 
united in wedlock in Quaker fashion. It 
proved an ideal union. The marriage being 
made in heaven, as I believe, it could not be 
other than an ideal one." 

I have already referred to Lucretia Mott's 
advanced views of theology being con- 
demned by the overseers of her meeting, but 
I did not give an account of the heroic 
measures resorted to by those good but con- 
servative men to prevent her from preaching 
her heretical doctrines. Having, as she 
claimed, a commission to preach from an 
authority higher than that held by the over- 
seers, and also claiming her privilege as a 
member and minister of good character, she 
persisted in delivering the inspired messages 
which came to her, despite the command to 
keep still. Then the offended brethren rose 
up and literally carried the offending minis- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 53 

ter out of the meeting-house. This failed to 
have the desired effect, for she continued to 
preach while being carried from the church 
and finished her sermon on the sidewalk to 
those who followed her out of the meeting- 
house, and that included a large majority of 
the worshipers. She afterward became a 
member and minister in a society known as 
Progressive Friends. 

Lucretia Mott's public work did not in 
the least injuriously affect her domestic life. 
She said: 

"My life in the domestic sphere has passed 
much as that of other wives and mothers in 
this country. I have given birth to six chil- 
dren, and not wishing to resign them to the 
care of others, I was much confined during 
their infancy and childhood. Being fond of 
reading, I omitted much unnecessary stitch- 
ing and ornamental work in the sewing for 
my family, that I might have more time for 
mental improvement." 

This distinguished woman gave in her 
own life practical proof that woman's eman- 
cipation from the thraldom of custom that 
confines her to the home circle does not un- 
fit her for the duties of wife and mother. 



GERALD MASSEY. 

The British sovereign has for many gen- 
erations honored one English poet above 
all other poets of the realm by appointing 
him to the post of Poet Laureate with a sub- 
stantial salary. He is the crown poet. That 
position has been filled by some of Eng- 
land's greatest bards, and by some of only 
moderate ability. The appointment is a 
matter of favor, and is conferred only on 
poets of the conservative type, those whose 
muse inspires songs that please the king and 
the nobility. There have been poets of the 
people in England who, like Burns, the 
Scottish bard pre-eminent, who, as Massey 
says, 

"Knew the sorrows of poor folk 

And felt for all their bitter pain, 
And from whose clouded soul there shook 
A music soft as summer rain." 

But during all the centuries until the later 
years of the reign of Victoria, no poet of 
the common people was honored by official 
recognition and royal bounty. The first 
man to wear the title of People's Poet was 
54 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 55 

born in a mud hut in the village of Tring, in 
1828. His father was a canal-boat driver 
for forty-five years on an average wage of 
ten shillings a week. Neither he nor his 
wife could read. One-third of his wages 
went for taxes, and the balance had to meet 
the cost of supporting a wife and eight chil- 
dren. This would barely feed and clothe the 
family in the cheapest manner. Nothing 
could be spared to pay for books or school- 
masters. The eighth of that brood of chil- 
dren, a son, was christened Gerald, and, as 
by custom, inherited his father's family 
name. His full name is Gerald Massey. 
Could one with prophetic vision have looked 
upon that babe as he lay in a hovel as poor 
as the historic manger in Bethlehem, and 
told the world what he saw as the horoscope 
of that child of poverty unrolled before his 
inspired vision, his story would have been 
treated with scorn or ridicule. Had he said, 
"I see this child, a poverty-stunted boy at 
fifteen years, in London, earning a scant 
living by running on errands, and stopping at 
book stalls on the way to read books he 
could not buy, then running all the faster 
to make up the time thus spent;" had he 
said, "I now see him denying himself food 
to save pennies till he had enough to buy a 
cheap secondhand book and denying him- 
self sleep that he might store his hungry 



56 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

mind with treasures of knowledge, reading 
Bunyan's allegory, Cobbett's works, study- 
ing French without a master, devouring 
English, Roman and Greek history, the es- 
says of Addison and other instructive books, 
and while still a boy beginning to write 
poems for the workingman's journal, 'Spirit 
of Freedom,' poems that fired the hearts of 
its readers with a desire and filled them with 
a hope, of better times to dawn upon this 
sin-cursed and tyrant-ridden world, in the 
near and pregnant future, and then as a 
world-famous and officially recognized poet 
of the people, crowned with brighter laurels 
than those worn by the Queen's poet 
laureate/' that prophet would have been 
voted an idle dreamer. Yet all of that and 
more lay in the womb of destiny and is now 
a part of the history of that land of which 
that boy wrote: 

" Tis the land that our stalwart forefathers 
trod, 

Where the brave and heroic soul'd 
Watered our freedom with their best blood 

In the martyr days of old. 
The hearts of the lowly gave Liberty birth, 

Their hearts were her cradles glorious, 
And wherever her footprints lettered the 
earth 

Great spirits upsprang victorious. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 57 

In our rare old land, our dear old land, 
With its memories bright and brave 

And sing hey for the hour its sons shall 
band 
To free it of tyrant and slave." 

In 1873 Gerald Massey visited America 
for the first time. He came on the invita- 
tion of the American Literary Bureau, whose 
secretary promised him 100 engagements to 
lecture at $100 each, less a commission of 
10 per cent. He was booked for one lec- 
ture in the Star Course of Chicago. The 
Philosophical Society and the Free Religious 
Society each offered him another engage- 
ment in Chicago. Those offers were made 
through the writer of this sketch and both 
were accepted. During his ten days' stay in 
Chicago my wife and I entertained him in 
our home and got the history of his life 
from his own lips. 

Gerald Massey is a very learned man, 
though he never attended any school after 
he was eight years of age, and then only 
long enough to learn to read. He is a self- 
made man in the fullest sense of that term. 
His lectures show profundity of thought 
and wide reading, and they have a peculiar 
charm, combining, as they do, poetic beauty 
and oratorical sublimity with logic, wit and 
humor. He is a radical reformer in politics 
and religion. This is clearly shown in his 



58 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

poems, as well as in his prose writings, and 
his lectures. In his "People's Advent" he 
cries : 

"Out of the light, ye priests, nor fling 

Your dark cold shadows on us longer; 
Aside, thou world-wide curse called king, 
The people's step is quicker, stronger; 
There's a Divinity within that makes men 
great whene'er they will it, 
God works with all who dare to win, 
And the time cometh to reveal it." 

Mr. Massey told me this story of how 
that poem served to open to him the door 
of fame and success. He had learned to set 
type, that he might print a volume of his 
poems, a bookbinder friend agreeing to 
print and bind the book for a half interest 
in it. When the volume was ready, he car- 
ried a copy to the editor of the London 
Athenaeum. Handing it to the great man, 
he said: 

"This is a volume of my own poems, which 
I hope you will look at, and, if you think it 
worthy, say something about it in the 
Athenaeum." He then withdrew, without 
giving his name. He traversed the streets 
of the city for some days, trying to sell his 
book, but with such poor success that he 
became utterly discouraged and said to his 
partner, "My book is a failure; it won't 
sell." He had scarcely finished this despair- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 59 

ing sentence when a boy from a book stall 
came in and said that he wanted six copies 
of a book of poems by Gerald Massey. Be- 
fore that boy was served another boy came 
and asked for six copies. When the sun 
went down that day the entire edition had 
been sold. He did not know what had 
caused the demand for his book until a 
friend called his attention to a review of it 
in that week's issue of the Athemeum. 

"I at once called on the editor of that 
great journal to thank him for his flattering 
review of my book. He received me most 
kindly, and said, 'Some weeks ago I saw in 
a shop window a new song, "The People's 
Advent," by Gerald Massey. I bought a 
copy and was charmed with it. After you 
had gone out that day you left me your 
book, I looked at it and the name of the 
author caught my attention. Why, that is 
the name of the author of my new song, I 
said to myself. I took the afternoon off, and 
read your book through, and wrote the re- 
view of it before I slept. I am glad it has 
helped to sell the book/ " 

Gerald Massey was famous in England at 
once. Edition after edition of that first book 
of poems were issued and sold as fast as 
they could be printed, until he withdrew it 
for revision. A copy of the fifth American 
edition, issued by Ticknor and Fields, Bos- 
ton, in 1863, lies before me, as I write. I 



60 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

purchased that copy in New York that year. 
One of the great charms of Massey's 
poems is found in the optimistic spirit that 
dominates them. His "To-day and To-mor- 
row" is typical of them all. In this he 
sings : 

"High hopes that burn'd like stars sublime 

Go down in the heavens of Freedom, 
And true hearts perish in the time 

We bitterliest need 'em; 
But never sit we down and say, 

There's nothing left but sorrow. 
We walk the wilderness to-day, 

The promised land to-morrow." 

I cannot resist the impression to quote 
here the last half of the closing verse of his 
"Eden" : 

"The golden chains that link heaven to 
earth 
The rusts of all time cannot sever; 
Evil shall die in its own dark dearth, 

And the good live on forever; 
And man, though he beareth the brand of 
sin, 
And the flesh and the devil have bound 
him, 
Hath a spirit within to old Eden akin, 
Only nurture up Eden around him." 

Gerald Massey's second volume of poems 
differs from the first in this, that while his 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 61 

earlier poems were mainly political, his later 
ones are chiefly religious. "A Tale of Eter- 
nity and Other Poems" is the title of the 
second collection of his poems. His "Tale of 
Eternity" is a religious epic, which was in- 
spired by what he believes to be a revelation 
of conditions and scenes in the world w 7 here 
dwell those who have passed from mortal 
sight through the gateway of death. That 
revelation was given through the lips of the 
poet's wife while she was in a state of un- 
conscious trance. Whatever its source, it is 
a marvelous poem and the theology of it is 
in accord with the more advanced religious 
belief and philosophy of this age. As a liter- 
ary composition, it is the equal of that great- 
est poem of the eighteenth century, "The 
Curse of Kehama," by Robert Southey, one 
of the most brilliant poet laureates that 
England ever had. Mr. Massey has for 
forty years been an earnest investigator of 
psychic phenomena, and he has long since 
become convinced that the two worlds, the 
physical and the spiritual, are in close 
touch, and that intercommunion of the deni- 
zens of the two is an established scientifico- 
religious fact. This distinguished poet and 
philosopher is still a vigorous writer, though 
seventy-eight years of age. He gives good 
promise of continuing his work on earth for 
some years to come. 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

I met William Lloyd Garrison for the first 
time, in 1876. Being familiar with his life 
history, I was surprised at his quiet, modest, 
genial manner. His face bore no record of 
the storm, the struggles, the trials and per- 
secutions through which he had passed. In- 
stead, it was placid as an autumn sunset, and 
radiant with the peace that comes as the 
reward of a life spent in the conscious serv- 
ice of humanity, the only service man can 
render to God. It was the face of a man 
who had been obedient to the higher law, 
written upon the tablets of his heart, and 
read by the inner light of his soul, the 
sanctuary of the Most High. It was the 
face of a child, with the strength of a man 
and the courage of a martyr. As I talked 
with this truly great man, I got a clear un- 
derstanding of his conduct and words, when 
rescued by the sheriff from a Boston mob 
that were resolved on hanging him to a 
lamp-post for preaching the gospel of free- 
dom. When he had securely locked him in 
a prison cell, the officer of the law said to 
him: 

62 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 63 

"Mr. Garrison, if I had not arrested and 
locked you up that mob would have hung 
you." 

"Well, that would not have hurt me, and 
perhaps I could serve the cause of humanity 
better by dying for it than in any other 
way." 

Naturally, my mind was carried back 
through the centuries to a scene in the city 
of Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago, 
when a greater than Garrison uttered a 
sentence of very similar import, to that of 
his quiet reply to the sheriff. The world's 
greatest political, social and religious re- 
former had just been sentenced to die upon 
a Roman cross for preaching liberty to the 
captive. His friends were overwhelmed with 
what they believed to be an irreparable dis- 
aster. But he said, "Let not your hearts be 
troubled, I have overcome the world." 

What the disciples of Jesus thought was 
final defeat, He knew was a complete vic- 
tory, and He was right and His friends 
wrong, as the world acknowledges now. 
And still another grand utterance was re- 
vived in my memory. In a talk with my 
friend, J. R. Brown, a brother of John 
Brown of Harper Ferry fame, I asked if he 
was in correspondence with John after he 
had been condemned to die upon the scaf- 
fold. 



64 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

"Yes," he replied, "I had a number of 
letters, written in his prison cell." 

"What was their chief purport?" I asked. 

"The fear that he would not be hanged.'* 

"Why, did he covet death?" 

"Yes. He said, 'If they hang me, I am 
a success. If they do not, I am a failure.' ' 

My readers will pardon me, I am sure, 
for another illustration of the martyr's spirit 
and courage. Some four centuries ago, in 
the city of Venice, a monk who had fol- 
lowed his great Master too literally and truly 
to accord with the traditions and doctrines 
of the Roman Catholic Church, was con- 
demned to die at the stake for the sin of 
heresy. In my mind's eye, I see that holy 
man, standing chained to the stake, with 
the fagots piled high about him. The 
lighted torch is applied to them, the flames 
leap up to light a face serene and peaceful, 
and from those lips, so soon to be consumed 
by fire, there comes this immortal sentence: 

"There is no pain in martyrdom, unless it 
come from the consciousness of being un- 
worthy of martyrdom." 

From that hour Savonarola's fame was 
assured, and his triumph complete. 

Winwood Read, in his "Martyrdom of 
Man," tells us that in his progress from 
savagery to civilization, man has marched 
through a wilderness drenched with blood 
and billowed with bones. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 65 

A few years before the Civil War that dis- 
tinguished statesman and famous preacher, 
Owen Lovejoy, in a speech in Congress, 
said: 

"Slavery is the sum of all villainies, and 
there is not in God's universe a place where 
it would be tolerated a single moment, ex- 
cept in hell and the Democratic party." 

Southern members of the House de- 
manded that he retract that offensive state- 
ment, and, on his refusal to do so, a number 
of the more impulsive' of them rushed to- 
ward him with drawn weapons, intent on 
compelling him to retract those offensive 
words. His friends surrounded him to pro- 
tect him from assault, and possibly death. 
Waving his hands outward, he said: 

"Let them come. They may shed my 
blood, as they shed the blood of my brother 
on the banks of the Mississippi twenty 
years ago, but they should remember that, 
The blood of the martyr is the seed of the 
church.' " 

"The Avon to the Severn runs, 
The Severn to the sea, 
And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad, 
Wide as the waters be." 

The indignant sons of the South resumed 
their seats and Lovejoy resumed his, a 



66 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

modest victor, through the aptness of a 
quotation fraught with immortal truth. 

William Lloyd Garrison lived to be 
crowned with respect and honor, in the city 
where he came so near being crowned with 
martyrdom. His life had been one of self- 
sacrifice, hence he was always poor in the 
goods of earth. Boston showed the sincer- 
ity of her repentance for misunderstanding 
and persecuting him by contributing freely 
to his comfort in his declining years. Thirty 
thousand dollars were raised and presented 
to him as a tribute to his character and life, 
and a statue was erected to his memory. 

Like many other antislavery men, I 
thought Garrison an extremist, but I never 
doubted his sincerity. He represented the 
radical wing of the army of universal free- 
dom. Gerrit Smith stood for a more con- 
servative course. In 1854 I listened to a 
debate on the two policies between Lucy 
Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, on the one 
side, and Frederick Douglass on the other. 
It was in Cincinnati where that debate oc- 
curred. An antislavery convention was in 
session, and those three persons had been 
appointed a committee on resolutions. They 
failed to agree and brought in two reports, 
one signed by Miss Stone and Mr. Black- 
well, the other by Frederick Douglass. The 
majority report followed the Garrisonian 
doctrine, while the other was in accord with 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 67 

the doctrine of the Gerrit Smith party. It 
will be remembered that Garrison and his 
school held to the doctrine of non-resist- 
ance, the doctrine of overcoming evil with 
good. Holding the Constitution of the 
United States to be a proslavery document, 
they regarded it as a covenant with death, 
and the union of the states of the North 
with those of the South they regarded as a 
league with hell. They favored a dissolution 
of the Union, on the same line (Mason 
and Dixon's) that the seceding states at- 
tempted to divide it upon in 1861. They 
believed that if this policy should be 
adopted that an irrepressible conflict would 
be ended, sectional war averted, slavery abol- 
ished in time by peaceful means, and di- 
vision of the Union would practically move 
the line then dividing Canada from the 
United States to 36 30' north latitude. 
Thereafter, slaves escaping across that line 
would be free, as they were when they 
escaped to Canada. The exodus of negroes 
from the northern tier of states of the 
South would have been so great that in a 
very few years slavery in those states would 
have become unprofitable and be abolished, 
as it had been in the northern states in the 
early years of the Republic. That those 
states would then re-enter the northern Re- 
public, thus moving the border-line further 
South, and that this process would have 



68 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

continued until all the states had become 
free and the Union be restored in its com- 
pleteness, as before, and, the bone of con- 
tention being removed, the Union would 
thereafter be harmonious. 

The Gerrit Smith party held to the doc- 
trine that the Constitution did not sanction 
slavery, and that slavery could be abolished 
by Congress, acting under its constitutional 
authority. 

The debate ended in a triumph for Doug- 
lass. The convention adopted his report and 
repudiated the disunion report of Miss Stone 
and her colleague, Mr. Blackwell. This 
was before the marriage of those able and 
distinguished young people. 

My personal acquaintance with Mr. Garri- 
son was limited, and his public career is a 
part of the history of this country, hence I 
need not add anything to this brief tribute 
to one of the greatest of modern prophets 
of political progress. 



MATTHEW SIMPSON. 

Bishop Matthew Simpson was a most 
distinguished minister and prelate of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. His fame as 
a pulpit orator was world-wide, and as an 
executive officer he ranked high. That 
great and good man was born in Ohio in 
1811. At the early age of twenty-eight he 
became president of the Indiana Asbury 
University at Greencastle, Ind., which posi- 
tion he filled with great ability for ten 
years, but during that period his fame as a 
preacher overshadowed that of the college 
president. His only rival as a pulpit orator 
was Henry Ward Beecher, who was preach- 
ing in Indianapolis during the early part of 
Bishop Simpson's residence at Greencastle. 
Those two great preachers were not rivals, 
but friends. Indiana was proud of both of 
them. There were several elements that 
went to make up the sum of Bishop Simp- 
son's power, and popularity as a preacher; 
among these sincerity is first. He preached 
what he believed to be the gospel of Christ; 
simplicity ranks next. He was wont to say, 
"The Gospel is for the common people, and 



70 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

the style of preaching described in the New 
Testament as that of Jesus and His apostles 
should be our pattern ; they were not learned 
dialecticians, but plain lay preachers. They 
spake the language of the people and they 
reached the hearts of the people." 

Possessing a wealth of words scarcely 
equaled by any other man, Bishop Simpson 
always wisely chose those which expressed 
his thought in a way so simple that all 
could understand it, whether learned or un- 
learned. I heard him for the first time, in 
1861, at a camp meeting in Southern Illi- 
nois. I was charmed with his manner and 
thrilled by his oratory, and by his earnest 
pathos, that seemed to clothe his words with 
electric power. His sermon on that occa- 
sion was political, as well as religious. On 
meeting him some years later, I said to him, 
"Bishop, your apostrophe to the American 
flag, on that occasion, was as fine a specimen 
of genuine eloquence as I ever listened to." 

"Thank you; I am pleased to know that 
even that much of my sermon has been 
remembered so long by at least one of my 
hearers." 

My real personal acquaintance with 
Bishop Simpson began in the spring of 
1883. He was the president and I the sec- 
retary of the Second International Conven- 
tion of the Arbitration League, which was 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 71 

held in Philadelphia. It was during the 
days of that great convention that I had the 
opportunity to study that eminent man and 
to become convinced that his goodness was 
the chief element of his greatness, hence, 
that his fame was not ephemeral, but of the 
enduring sort. The world cannot forget 
such men as Bishop Simpson, for his life 
was given to the world in earnest effort to 
uplift humanity and move the race on to- 
ward the millennium. 

Bishop Simpson was. in close touch with 
President Lincoln during the stormy period 
of the Civil War. Mr. Lincoln often con- 
ferred with him on affairs of state when con- 
fronted by great crises. And when the 
assassin's bullet released the soul of the 
great President from its mortal tenement, 
Bishop Simpson was at once summoned to 
Washington to comfort the bereaved family 
and to counsel with those in charge of the 
funeral arrangements. He went with the 
sacred remains from city to city, and he 
delivered the funeral oration at the tomb of 
Lincoln at Springfield. The closing para- 
graph of that discourse is quoted here as a 
specimen of Bishop Simpson's simple elo- 
quence : 

"Chieftain, farewell! The nation mourns 
thee. Mothers shall teach thy name to 
their interested children. The youth of our 



72 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

land shall emulate thy virtues. Statesmen 
shall study thy record, and from it learn 
lessons of wisdom. Mute though thy lips 
be, yet they still speak. Hushed is thy 
voice, but its echoes of liberty are ringing 
through the world, and the sons of bondage 
listen with joy. Thou didst fall not for thy- 
self; the assassin had no hate for thee. Our 
hearts were aimed at; our national life was 
sought. We crown thee as our martyr, and 
humanity enthrones thee as her triumphant 
son." 

Bishop Simpson was in active sympathy 
with all movements that promised to make 
the world better. He earnestly desired the 
abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of 
woman and the adoption of arbitration in- 
stead of war in the settlement of disagree- 
ments between nations. He held firmly to 
the opinion that war is not only barbarous, 
but an unchristian method of adjusting dis- 
putes. During the closing years of his earth 
life he gave active support to the work of 
the American Arbitration League. It was 
in this work that the author of this sketch 
had the privilege and pleasure of a close 
acquaintance with him. He possessed a 
most charming personality. To know him 
was to love him. His kindly nature, his 
persuasive eloquence and his sympathetic 
tone of voice constituted his chief power as 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 73 

a preacher, and it was as a preacher that 
the great bishop showed his true greatness, 
and as a preacher, rather than as a college 
president and bishop, his fame will rest 
secure in the annals of Methodism. As a 
patriot, reformer and orator his place in the 
history of his country is secure. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

My acquaintance with America's most dis- 
tinguished preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, 
dates back to 1867. I had started an agri- 
cultural journal, The Northwestern Farmer, 
at Indianapolis. A copy of The Farm and 
Garden, edited by Henry Ward Beecher dur- 
ing his pastorate of Plymouth Church at 
Indianapolis, came into my hands, and this 
prompted me to put my eminent predeces- 
sor on my complimentary list and write him 
that I had done so. In a brief time I re- 
ceived an autograph letter from him, which 
I knew that he meant I should print. Im- 
mediately on its appearance, the Associated 
Press agent sent it to the leading daily jour- 
nals, and it was printed in all of them. 
This gave my paper a wide and favorable 
notoriety. It was very kind of Mr. Beecher 
to write me as he did, and I appreciated his 
act very highly. That letter was read by 
almost everybody at the time, but that was 
nearly forty years ago. A new generation 
of readers has grown up who have not read 
it, and if this sketch should meet the eye of 
74 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 75 

any who did, I doubt not they will enjoy a 
second perusal of it, hence I quote it here: 

"Brooklyn, January 12, 1867. 
"Dr. T. A. Bland, 
"Dear Sir: 

"I am much obliged to you for the num- 
bers of The Northwestern Farmer. I have 
read them with great interest. I am sure, if 
the whole volume shall prove as good as 
these numbers, it will not be the publisher's 
fault if the readers are not greatly benefited. 

"Naturally, I am carried back to my own 
former residence in Indianapolis, and to my 
labors in the same field you now cultivate. 
A monthly paper had been started by a Mr. 
Hatch. He was enterprising, but lacked 
the necessary capital for his enterprise. At 
that time Vance Noel was proprietor of 
The Indiana Journal, and John D. Defrees 
its editor. Mr. Noel inquired of me for 
some person who could prepare every week 
for the Journal an agricultural department, 
and I finally undertook it myself. The re- 
sult was that three volumes of The Indiana 
Farm and Garden were issued under my 
auspices. 

"Almost all the old nursery men and 
amateur horticulturists of that day have 
ripened and dropped. The whole state is 
wonderfully transformed, and Indianapolis, 
which fluctuated in population from three 



76 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

to four thousand inhabitants, has risen to 
the proportions of a great city. The little 
ten-foot house in which I then lived is gone, 
but a dwelling which I built and lived in for 
a few months before my removal still stands, 
and is interesting to me from the fact that I 
worked on it with my own hands, and, so 
far as painting was concerned, performed 
almost the whole of it myself, inside and out. 
In the grounds adjoining I had a garden, 
which would cut a poor figure by the side 
of stylish eastern gardens, but I suspect few 
gentlemen extract from their more gorgeous 
pretenses half as much deep delight as I 
did from my two city lots. I was too poor 
to hire much labor and was therefore my 
own gardener, and, being an enthusiast, I 
always planned twice as much work as I 
could perform well, and so my garden was 
not very trim and clean. But things grew 
well in it and I was satisfied. If blight has 
not done the work of death there ought to 
be some pear trees, now in their glory, 
which I planted with my own hands. 

"In some sense my garden was missionary 
work. The whole city was given over to 
politics and money-making. 

"Some ludicrous experiences abide in my 
memory. Good old Daniel Yandes lived op- 
posite me. My health was rendered feeble 
by chills and fever, yet I would creep out 
and painfully prepare ground for my bulbs 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 77 

and roots. The kind old man came one day, 
and, leaning on the fence, watched me for 
a long time, as if to be perfectly sure that I 
was wasting thought on flowers. 

" 'Well/ said he, T suppose you enjoy it?' 
Tndeed I do.' Then, with a little sparkle in 
his eye, as if he half saw the humor of the 
thing, he said, 'Well, the prettiest flower in 
the garden is a cabbage.' 

"Being a Pennsylvania Dutchman by 
birth, he came honestly by his taste. But of 
the same blood came also good old Mother 
Bobbs, and who ever loved flowers more 
than she did? 

"During my residence in Indianapolis 
everybody kept pigs, and everybody kept 
them in the street. Governor Noble pre- 
sented me with a pair, and in two years I 
found myself owner of some thirty children 
of the street, and of not good conduct. 
Their skill in opening gates, digging into a 
field under the rails, or squeezing through 
between them, went far toward convincing 
me of the reasoning power of pigs. My 
slow and wearisome labors were provokingly 
neutralized by a cunning old sow, who, 
about twice a week, would get into my gar- 
den, in spite of rails or strings, latches and 
hinges. The chills made a night excursion 
dangerous to me, yet one midnight I heard 
her eating and smacking her chops and 
could endure it no longer. I seized my gun, 



78 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

omitting formalities of toilet, dashed out 
after her. Away she went, scampering 
down the garden, and away I went down 
the central alley, to be ready for her return. 
She stopped and I stopped. I could see 
nothing, hear nothing, and it began to 
strike me that I had rather the worst of it 
and only needed a spectator to appear de- 
cidedly ludicrous. Just then, with a bark, 
she dashed past me on the left. I took aim 
with my ear and let off in succession both 
barrels. The squeal which each evoked was 
music to me. She left the garden and never 
returned, nor do I recollect afterward to 
have met her on the street. But if I should 
indulge in all the recollections of Indianapo- 
lis that come up I should run on endlessly. 

"I hope that you may reap both credit 
and profit, in a vocation that bears such an 
honorable relation to the thrift and intelli- 
gence of the great working state of Indiana. 
I remember with vivid pleasure the years I 
spent in her borders. Happier ones I shall 
never see. My eldest son, who served 
through the whole war, is not ashamed to be 
called a Hoosier. 

"I am, very truly yours, 

"Henry Ward Beecher." 

That letter gives a clear insight into more 
than one phase of Mr. Beecher's character — 
his love of nature and his sense of humor. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 79 

I met him personally afterward and heard 
him preach a number of times. On one oc- 
casion during the celebrated Beecher-Tilton 
trial I called on a mutual friend of ours, and 
found Mr. Beecher there. He greeted me 
in his most cordial manner. Grasping my 
hand, he asked, "How are you?" "Quite 
well, I thank you," I responded. 

"No, you ain't, you're sick. Your liver is 
out of whack. Go home and take a quart of 
Brandreth's pills, then you'll fat up like me." 

"I beg to decline your services as a phy- 
sician, Mr. Beecher," I replied. "I am free 
to admit that as a preacher you are my 
superior, but if your prescription is an indi- 
cation of your knowledge of medicine, I 
think I can beat you curing the sick.'' 

Mr. Beecher was at that time carrying a 
burden that would have crushed almost any 
other man. But he bore it with a courage 
and composure that was a constant surprise 
to all who knew him. He manifested sub- 
lime courage, when, during our Civil War, 
he visited England, with the patriotic pur- 
pose of trying to change the sentiment of 
the English people, on the issues between 
the North and South. They sympathized 
with the efforts of the southern states to 
dissolve the American Union and establish 
a confederacy founded on negro slavery. 
Beecher's fame as an orator gave him a 
hearing, but his bold utterances incensed 



80 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

the poorly informed, and prejudiced masses 
to a degree that would have been beyond 
the control of a less eloquent, tactful and 
courageous man. He won a signal triumph 
and did his country a great service on that 
occasion. 

Henry Ward Beecher was one of the 
pioneers in the field of religious progress. 
He would undoubtedly have been excom- 
municated by the orthodox Congregational- 
ist Church, forty years ago or more, if he 
had not been a man of extraordinary power. 
That he preached what his church held to 
be heresy was notorious, yet he lived and 
died a minister of the faith of his distin- 
guished father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, a cham- 
pion of the creed of Calvin, without a peer 
in his time. 

It is an interesting fact that, unless his 
eldest son, William, was an exception, all 
of Lyman Beecher's sons and daughters 
were, to their father's creed, heretical. 



THOMAS K. BEECHER 

Thomas K. Beecher was one of the sweet- 
est-souled men I ever met. I called at his 
home in Elmira, N. Y., one day in 1877. 
His sister Catherine, who answered my ring, 
said: 

"My brother Thomas is at his club in his 
church. He dines there almost every day." 

I found him in his study. He gave me 
a cordial greeting, saying, "I have heard 
of you and enjoyed reading some of your 
contributions to the press on political econ- 
omy, and I am glad to meet you." 

I said, "I am glad to meet you, Mr. 
Beecher, for I have long admired you 
through your writings, and your published 
sermons. I have called to ask you to in- 
vite Col. A. B. Meacham to lecture in your 
church on the Indian problem, next Sun- 
day." 

"I will gladly have Colonel Meacham oc- 
cupy my pulpit, on next Sunday evening, 
but I suggest that you call on Rev. Dr. 
Potter of the First Presbyterian Church and 
ask him to give the Colonel his pulpit on 
Sunday morning. Dr. Potter is our Pres- 
81 



82 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

byterian bishop. He looks like John Calvin, 
but he is one of the best men that ever 
graced this planet. I will give you a letter 
to him. But before you go let me show 
you our church." 

He led the way, and I followed him, 
through that wonderful building, which con- 
tains an audience room of about one thou- 
sand seats, a lecture room, club rooms, com- 
prising kitchen, dining-room, reading-room, 
parlor, billiard-room, tenpin alley, gymna- 
sium; also sewing-room, where I found a 
dozen or more ladies engaged in making 
clothing for the poor heathen, not of Africa, 
but of Elmira. "What is the name of your 
church, Mr. Beecher?" I asked, "and what 
denomination does it represent?" 

"It is Park Church," he replied; "that is 
all the designation it has." 

That church stands in the center of a city 
block and is surrounded by trees and flower 
beds. 

Mr. Beecher was for some years pastor of 
the First Presbyterian Church of Elmira, 
but a time came when his conscience would 
not permit him to be classed as a Presby- 
terian, though allowed perfect freedom in 
the expression of his views. He resigned 
his pulpit and salary, rented a hall and 
commenced preaching as an independent. 
A large number of his old congregation fol- 
lowed him, and many people who had not 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 83 

been in the habit of listening to sermons, 
save that on occasion some of them had 
dropped in to hear Beecher, not only be- 
came regular attendants upon his services, 
but took an active interest in the work of 
this free movement. On assuming his new 
role, Mr. Beecher announced that he would 
not consent to the use of collection baskets 
or plates, nor would he allow his congrega- 
tion to vote him a salary for his services. 
Contributions, made voluntarily and quietly, 
were depended upon to meet the ordinary 
expenses, and for his personal support he 
relied upon such gifts as came to him pri- 
vately. He informed me that that plan had 
worked admirably. "The church has had all 
the money it has needed and I have had all 
that was necessary to the support of my 
family and all that I could use wisely in 
private charities." 

"I am reminded/' I said, "that my father, 
who was an elder in a church in which the 
elders were the preachers, and who preached 
without salary, held to the opinion that a 
hireling ministry was an unchristian institu- 
tion." 

"Your father was right on that subject, 
however wrong he might have been in his 
theological views." 

Bidding adieu to this truly Christian min- 
ister, I proceeded to the home of Dr. Pot- 
ter. The good Doctor read Mr. Beecher's 



84 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

letter and then said, "We all love Brother 
Beecher, and his suggestion meets my full 
approval. Colonel Meacham shall have my 
pulpit on Sunday morning next, to preach 
the gospel of justice to the poor Indian." 

In 1881 Thomas K. Beecher visited the 
city of Washington, as my guest, and 
preached a Christmas sermon in Lincoln 
Hall, which I had engaged for the occasion. 
It was a great sermon. The Daily Republi- 
can of the next morning contained an excel- 
lent report of it, and the writer said, "In 
some respects Thomas K. is the equal, if not 
the superior, of his more famous brother, 
Henry Ward Beecher." 

There was a tender pathos in his voice 
that melted the hearts of his hearers, bring- 
ing tears of sympathy to the eyes of even 
the unbelievers. The Beecher brothers were 
both opposed to human slavey, but Thomas 
not only opposed chattel slavery, but wage 
servitude, and monopolistic oppression of 
the industrial classes and small traders. He 
allied himself actively with the Greenback 
party and did what he could to secure the 
abolition of the United States banking sys- 
tem. He held, with Gen. B. F. Butler, Peter 
Cooper and other prominent men, that all 
currency, whether gold, silver or paper, 
should be coined or printed by the general 
government, and issued to the people direct, 
and not through banks controlled by private 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 85 

capitalists or corporations of capitalists. He 
believed that the monopoly of the tool of 
trade, money, is the most oppressive of all 
monopolies. His radicalism in politics did 
not in the least injure his influence as a 
minister of the Gospel, for the excellent rea- 
son that all who knew him had absolute 
faith in his sincerity. After all, it is charac- 
ter that counts. Even the evil-doer re- 
spects the truly righteous man. 



LEW WALLACE. 

Lew Wallace won military renown as ma- 
jor-general of the Federal Army, in the war 
between the government of the United 
States and the rebellious states of the South. 
But his fame as a literary man has so com- 
pletely eclipsed his deeds of heroism, on the 
field of carnage, that the world is willing to 
forget the soldier and remember, with pride 
and gratitude, the author. The author of 
"Ben Hur" is famous the world over, and 
he will live in history while men shall con- 
tinue to reverence the character and emulate 
the life of the meek and lowly, yet heroic 
Nazarene Carpenter, which, I firmly believe, 
will be till this planet shall have finished its 
mission of giving birth to men, grown sterile 
from the exhaustion of age, and is ready to 
return to the bosom of its mother, the sun, 
to be purified and born again, to repeat its 
grand career. 

I made the personal acquaintance of Lew 
Wallace about the close of the great Civil 
War. He was a hero then, crowned with 
the laurel of victory and the honors of a 
patriot soldier. I liked him for his modest 
86 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 87 

bearing, his kindly spirit and his warm hand 
clasp. I heard him in a public speech, and 
was charmed by his earnestness and his 
eloquence. He was a great soldier, and a 
brilliant orator, and I saw in him more than 
a soldier or orator — a man of noble character 
and earnest purpose. That character and 
purpose were revealed afterward in his great 
books, "The Fair God," "Ben Hur" and "A 
Prince of India." All great, but the great- 
est of all is "Ben Hur," "A Prince of India" 
being almost as good. 

Lew Wallace was a son of David Wallace, 
who, after serving two terms as lieutenant- 
governor, was elected governor of my native 
state, Indiana, in 1836. 

The father was a good and great man, 
hence the son is an excellent illustration of 
the proverb, "Blood will tell." 

I am strongly impressed to present here 
a brief sketch of the career of Governor 
Wallace, in part from memory, and in part 
from data furnished me by his distinguished 
son. 

HE WAS A PIONEER OF PROGRESS. 

The era of railways in America began the 
year Lew Wallace was born, 1828, with the 
opening of a railroad fourteen miles long 
in Connecticut and one nine miles long in 
Maryland. Nine years later Governor Wal- 
lace aroused the enthusiasm of the progres- 



88 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

sive people of Indiana by advocating the 
building, by the state, of a system of canals 
and railways. He had won his election on 
that issue mainly, against both argument 
and ridicule, for some of those who opposed 
him urged that his scheme of internal im- 
provements of the system of transportation 
and travel would bankrupt the state and 
destroy the business of a great number of 
people engaged in hauling farm products 
to market and goods from the cities to the 
small towns, while it would be of but little 
advantage to anybody, except contractors 
and speculators. He argued, with what now 
seems like inspirational logic, that the cost 
would be small as compared with the eco- 
nomic and other advantages which would 
arise from these great improvements. 

"Why," he would say, "the cost to the 
people would not exceed the product of a 
hen and chickens to each one, and the prices 
of your chickens and of everything else that 
you raise would be doubled or trebled." 
This argument increased his vote, but it fas- 
tened on him the nickname proposed by a 
humorously sarcastic opponent of "Hen and 
Chickens Wallace." 

In his first message to the legislature 
Governor Wallace said, "Within a quarter 
of a century of this time people will be able 
to travel from Indianapolis to New York in- 
side of forty-eight hours." This prophetic 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 89 

statement was ridiculed by some, while 
others said he was a lunatic, but the wiser 
ones said, "Let us wait and see." 

A member of the legislature of 1837 told 
me this anecdote: 

"When that part of Governor Wallace's 
message which urged the building of rail- 
roads was read, a member was so disgusted 
that he could not wait for the proper time 
to discuss the proposition, so he interrupted 
the proceedings by saying: 

" 'Well, Vm eternally down on them sort 
of roads. WeVe got some of 'em down in 
my county, and they air a blamed site wus 
than dirt roads. They keep a wagon out 
of the mud, but they air so rough that they 
wear it out quick if they don't break the 
axle tree.' " 

"The presiding officer said: The honor- 
able member from is not only out of 

order, but he evidently thinks that the gover- 
nor is recommending a system of corduroy 
roads. For the information of the gentle- 
man and other members who need to be 
informed on this subject, I will say that the 
railroads referred to by the governor are 
not constructed by laying fence rails or poles 
across country roads to keep wagons from 
sinking in the mud, but they are built by 
laying long wooden sills lengthwise four or 
five feet apart, and spiking bars of iron 
called rails on top of those sills, for cars 



90 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

drawn by steam engines called locomotives 
to run upon and which can travel fifteen 
or twenty miles an hour and haul loads 
which it would require a team of one hun- 
dred horses to draw on ordinary roads two 
miles an hour.' " 

The great financial panic of 1837 was an 
important factor in delaying the improve- 
ments urged by Governor Wallace, so that 
it was ten years from that time before the 
pioneer railroad of Indiana was built, yet 
six years later the Hoosier capital was the 
great railway center of the world. Unfortu- 
nately for the people of the state, while 
Governor Wallace's prophecy was fulfilled, 
his plan of having the state build, own and 
get the profits from these public highways, 
was not adopted. 

The plan of the great far-seeing and pub- 
lic-spirited governor would have enriched 
the whole people and especially the farmers 
and other producing classes. The people 
are beginning to discover the mistake that 
their fathers made in not adopting the policy 
of that greatest statesman and most pro- 
found political economist whom they ever 
had the good fortune to elect to the im- 
portant office of chief executive of the state. 
He was a prophet of progress whose fame 
will grow brighter as the wisdom of his 
foresight and the sterling qualities of his 
character are more clearly seen by succeed- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 91 

ing generations of wiser men than those of 
his time. 

It was during the term of Gov. James 
Whitcomb, 1847, that the first railroad was 
opened in Indiana. Whitcomb was elected 
in 1844, hence his election and administra- 
tion lie within the boyish memories of the 
author. Governor Whitcomb was a bache- 
lor when elected, but he became a benedict 
soon after he was inaugurated. The story 
of his courtship and marriage was quite 
romantic. 

While addressing an audience of both men 
and women during the campaign Cupid shot 
an arrow from a stragetic position which 
went straight to its mark, the theretofore 
impervious heart of the candidate for gover- 
nor, and stuck there. To drop metaphor, 
the bachelor orator of fifty fell desperately 
in love with a charming maiden of thirty 
summers, who occupied a seat immediately 
in front of the rostrum. He obtained an in- 
troduction and at once laid siege to the 
heart of his inamorata. Mr. Whitcomb was 
at that period of his life an inveterate snuff 
taker, and when in conversation with any 
person he usually held his open snuff box 
in his left hand, and at frequent intervals he 
would take a pinch and present his box to 
his vis-a-vis. Before introducing him to the 
lady, his friend, whose good office he had 
sought, said to him: 



92 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

"Now, Jim, don't ask her to take snuff 
with you." 

"Of course I won't/' he replied. But he 
did. The lady declined, with thanks, but 
this not being an uncommon thing in his 
experience did not embarrass him. When 
his friend charged him with not keeping his 
promise, he was so mortified, that he threw 
his snuff box into the fire and then and there 
abandoned the habit of taking snuff. 

His wooing proved successful, and soon 
after he assumed the honorable and respon- 
sible office of governor he took upon him- 
self the equally responsible and no less hon- 
orable position of husband. 

This anecdote seems to the narrator not 
out of place in this sketch, as Governor 
Whitcomb is not to have a separate biog- 
raphy in this series. 

Lew Wallace's "Fair God," as many of 
my readers know, is a historic romance of 
the conquest of Mexico by Spain. As a 
history of that event, with its cruelties, it 
is exceedingly interesting, but its chief in- 
terest to me, as doubtless to many others, 
is found in the revelations it contains of the 
character of Montezuma and his people, 
and of the sociology and religion of that 
representative nation of a civilization vastly 
more ancient than that of any European 
race. There is a growing belief among 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 93 

scientific men of the most advanced type 
that the lost Atlantis of Plato actually ex- 
isted. That time was when a great continent 
stood where the Atlantic Ocean now bears 
the commerce of the world, that a mighty 
nation of highly civilized people occupied 
that continent, and that at some remote 
period, variously estimated at from twenty 
thousand to thirty thousand years ago, per- 
haps at the time of the Isothermal cataclysm 
which deluged Europe, that continent went 
down and the continent now known as 
North America arose above the waves that 
had formerly rolled over it. That Mexico 
and Gentral and South America escaped the 
fate of Atlantis, and that the peoples who 
lived there before the discoveries of Colum- 
bus and Americus Vespucius opened the new 
old world to the knowledge of the old new 
world, were degenerate descendants of the 
same race that had lived in the lost conti- 
nent. In calling those people degenerates 
I am guided by the general opinion that all 
civilizations culminate and then decline. 
Egypt, India and China are striking exam- 
ples. But, however much they were inferior 
to their ancient ancestors, the people of 
Mexico, Peru and other nations of like char- 
acter were far superior to their Spanish con- 
querors in all the elements of true civiliza- 
tion. 



94 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

"Ben Hur" is Lew Wallace's greatest 
book, and the one on which his fame as an 
author chiefly rests. That book is a sermon 
in story that eclipses all of the lives of the 
Christ that were ever given to the world. 
Perhaps the books that most favorably com- 
pare with it are "The Prince of the House of 
David" and "Ecce Homo," but even the bril- 
liant Renan must yield the palm of literary 
excellence to Wallace. 

On reading "Ben Hur" one can but mar- 
vel at the profound knowledge of peoples 
and customs of the time of the Nazarene. 
It gives the reader a vivid idea of Jerusalem 
and the Jews, of Rome and the Romans and 
of Syria and the Syrians. Next to Jesus, 
Ben Hur is the great character of the drama. 
Simonides and his daughter Esther are also 
great characters; in fact, all the characters 
are great after their kind. But my readers 
are doubtless familiar with that marvelous 
book, which easily ranks as the best Ameri- 
can novel. 

"A Prince of India" ranks next to "Ben 
Hur" ; indeed, in some respects it is equal 
to it. That new story of the wandering Jew 
is equal in literary style to Eugene Sue's 
story of that title, and in its moral uplift 
and profound religious philosophy it is far 
superior. The familiarity with the religion 
of Mohammed and the astrology of India 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 95 

shown by Wallace in that work is a constant 
surprise to the reader, while the character 
of the conqueror of Rome, Mohamid Ali, is 
one of the greatest and most charming pen 
pictures of a true and grand man and hu- 
mane monarch ever written, and this is 
equaled by the history of the beautiful Prin- 
cess Irena and of the Christ-like Russian 
monk, Sergius. The story of the condemna- 
tion of Sergius to be slain by the lions for 
preaching the Gospel of Christ to an assem- 
bly of paganized priests, brings vividly to 
one's mind the story of his great Master, who 
was condemned to die on a Roman cross 
at the demand of the bigoted priests of 
Judea. The heroism of the latter approaches 
very near to that of the former, and the de- 
votion of Irena and her heroic resolve to 
die with her disciple, Sergius, forcing the 
gate of the arena and rushing to his side as 
he stood calmly awaiting the fatal spring of 
the king of beasts, "Tamerlane," and as 
calmly as he, awaiting death in its most 
tragic form, is thrilling to the last degree. 

The rescue by the African giant, servant 
of the Prince of India, of both of these dev- 
otees, comes as a delightful relief. The 
noble action of the last of the Roman em- 
perors, Constantine the Second, in bearding 
the lion of pious fanaticism and peremp- 
torily forbidding a second attempt to sacri- 



96 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

fice the heretical monk on the altar of anti- 
Christian bigotry, cannot but cause the 
reader to drop a tear of sympathy over the 
final fate of that good but weak ruler, of an 
empire once the greatest on earth, but 
which, as the result of the ambitious effort 
of the First Constantine to perpetuate its 
power by uniting the Pagan and Christian 
churches into a great religious hierarchy un- 
der the title of "The Roman Catholic 
Church," had lost most of its territory and 
power, and was finally conquered by the 
Moslem Turk, who made the once powerful 
capital of Rome, Constantinople, his seat of 
power. 

The efforts of the wandering Jew, "A 
Prince of India," to save Constantine and 
his empire from the fate that he saw was 
impending, forms another highly interesting 
chapter of this book. The speech of that 
great man, who had then lived on earth for 
fourteen centuries, before the bishops and 
prelates of the Greek Church in the emper- 
or's audience room is the greatest theological 
production I ever read. The emperor was 
convinced that the prince's views were 
sound and his program feasible, but the 
prelates denounced the entire discourse as 
a mass of heretical sophistry. They de- 
nounced the prince in bitter terms and 
would have attempted to put him to death 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 97 

but for the interference of the emperor, 
whose guest he was. 

Lew Wallace lived to a serene old age, 
an honor to the state of his birth and to the 
nation whose unity his sword helped to 
preserve. I admired and loved him as a 
man and I am glad of this opportunity to 
pay him a brief but sincere tribute. 



BENJAMIN F. BUTLER. 

I made the personal acquaintance of Gen- 
eral Butler in 1866, when, as a journalist, 
I interviewed him on the political issues of 
that period. The War of the Rebellion had 
ended the year before in the complete sub- 
jugation of those states of the Union which 
had attempted to set up a republic of their 
own. The men of the southern states whose 
opinions on public policy dominated the 
majority of the people of that section held 
that the United States was simply a con- 
federacy of independent states which had 
voluntarily united for mutual benefit, and 
that when one or more of those states should 
decide that their rights and interests were 
being violated by the other states, or by 
the general government, they had the same 
right to withdraw that they had to enter 
the Union in the first place. Many public 
men of the northern states held this same 
view. This class was not confined to the 
Democratic party, but embraced many lead- 
ing Whigs. Slavery was the bone of con- 
tention when the Union was formed by the 
adoption of a constitution. All the states 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 99 

save one were slave states then; negro 
slavery was found to be unprofitable in the 
North, but it was profitable in the South. 
The Union came to be divided on sectional 
lines. The slavery question got into politics 
and finally became the leading issue. A 
large majority of the people of the free 
states were content to leave the southern 
states free to manage their own affairs as 
they saw fit; but few desired to take from 
them the right to perpetuate the institution 
of slavery where it still existed. But a ma- 
jority were opposed to any increase of the 
area of slave territory. The republic of 
Texas asked to be annexed to the United 
States. It was a slave-holding republic. For 
that reason many northern people were op- 
posed to its being admitted into the Union 
as a state. Martin Van Buren, successor of 
Andrew Jackson as president, was defeated 
for the nomination for president in the Dem- 
ocratic convention of 1844 by the delegates 
from the South and their northern allies, 
because he had publicly announced his op- 
position to the annexation of Texas until she 
should abolish slavery. James K. Polk of 
Tennessee was nominated and elected on 
that issue. This made the Democratic party 
a proslavery party. Texas was .admitted 
into the Union in 1845. A disagreement 
arose between the United States and the 
republic of Mexico over the boundary line 

L0FC, 



100 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

between Texas and Mexico. The United 
States declared war against Mexico and sent 
Gen. Zaeh. Taylor and Gen. Winfield Scott 
to whip our little sister. They did it quickly 
and effectively. In the treaty of peace that 
followed, our commissioners compelled Mex- 
ico to cede to the United States all that im- 
mense territory now known as New Mexico, 
Arizona and California. The South wanted 
this new territory erected into slave states; 
she also wanted Kansas, which then included 
Colorado, admitted as a slave state. To ef- 
fect this the Missouri Compromise act, a 
southern measure when it was adopted, 
which limited slavery to the territory south 
of latitude 36 30', commonly known as Ma- 
son and Dixon's line, had to be repealed. 
This was effected through the efforts of 
Stephen A. Douglas, who secured the pas- 
sage of an act giving the people of new ter- 
ritories the right to adopt constitutions with 
or without slavery, as they might choose. 
This broke up the old parties, and the free- 
soil elements of both united in the forma- 
tion of a new party, which took the name 
Republican. The Democrats divided in i860 
at the Charleston convention, one faction 
nominating Douglas for president and the 
other faction Breckenridge. Lincoln was 
elected as a Republican. The South seceded 
and the war followed. 

Benjamin F. Butler led the bolt from the 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 101 

Charleston convention and supported Breck- 
enridge for president. He ran for governor 
of Massachusetts that year as a Brecken- 
ridge Democrat. He opposed Douglas and 
his platform on the ground that squatter 
soverenty opened up the whole question of 
slavery, including the revival of the slave 
trade. In a speech in the Charleston con- 
vention, he said: 

"Our opponents will see in this platform 
what I hope southern gentlemen do not 
mean — the reopening of the African slave 
trade. It will be proclaimed from every 
stump, flaunted from every pulpit, thundered 
from every platform in the North, while we, 
your friends (and without us you are power- 
less), will see the last vestige of the constitu- 
tional rights of the South stricken down." 

General Butler asserted that the Brecken- 
ridge Democrats were opposed to secession 
and that the leading supporters of Douglas 
in the South were disunionists. He claimed 
to be a constitutional Democrat, and there- 
fore in favor of the constitutional rights of 
the South, but opposed to the dissolution 
of the Union for any cause. 

Immediately after the election of Lincoln 
the Democrat leaders met in Washington 
for conference. General Butler and Mr. 
Breckenridge were among them. Those 
two men joined in the effort to stay the 
secession movement. South Carolina had 



102 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

already passed an ordinance of secession and 
sent three commissioners to Washington to 
treat with the United States for terms of 
separation. General Butler strove to per- 
suade them not to present their credentials 
to the President, and on failing in this, he 
went to the White House and advised Pres- 
ident Buchanan to summon the United 
States Marshal to the White House and 
when the South Carolina commissioners 
should present their credentials, have them 
arrested on the charge of treason and put 
on trial for their lives in the Supreme Court, 
as Aaron Burr was tried in the early years 
of the republic. He offered to assist in the 
prosecution without fee. Attorney-General 
Black favored Butler's plan, but the Presi- 
dent refused to sanction it. This wise plan 
of nipping the secession movement in the 
bud failed through the weakness of one man 
whom the people had endowed with su- 
preme power. 

General Butler tried to dissuade the south- 
ern leaders from their mad course, but he 
failed. They insisted that the North would 
not fight. Butler said: 

"We of the North are very quiet now, be- 
cause we don't believe you mean to carry 
out your threats. But as sure as you at- 
tempt by force to break up the Union the 
North will resist that attempt with the last 
man and the last dollar, and you are as cer- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 103 

tain to fail as there is a God in heaven. You 
may ruin the South and blot out slavery, but 
you can't destroy the Union. It is cemented 
by the blood of your fathers and mine, and 
one it must continue forever." 

General Butler was the commander of the 
state militia of Massachusetts, and the 
morning after Fort Sumter was fired upon 
he, by order of the governor, started from 
Boston for Washington with his brigade. 
He had sent one regiment, the Sixth Massa- 
chusetts, on an earlier train, and the first 
blood of the war was shed by that regiment 
in Baltimore, a mob firing upon it as it 
passed through the city. 

For a history of General Butler's career 
as a soldier, his capture of Baltimore and 
Fort Hatteras, his campaign on the James, 
his capture of New Orleans, etc., etc., the 
reader is referred to the author's life of 
General Butler, published by Lee & Shepard 
of Boston, in 1879. 

General Butler was not only one of the 
greatest military men of this country, but 
he was a great man in other respects. His 
capture of New Orleans was one of the most 
brilliant feats of generalship recorded in 
history, but it is equaled, if not eclipsed, 
by his wise government of that rebellious 
city. He speedily brought order out of 
chaos, and his sanitive measures banished the 
yellow fever from that home of deadly 



104 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

miasma. It is strange, indeed, that the of- 
ficial physicians did not adopt Butler's meth- 
ods of dealing with the epidemic last sum- 
mer. If they had done so hundreds, if not 
thousands, of lives would have been saved. 

The war over, General Butler returned 
to his home at Lowell, a Republican of the 
radical type. This brings me to my first 
interview with him, already referred to. He 
had come to Indianapolis, where I then lived, 
to speak in a Republican campaign. He 
sustained the reconstruction policy of the 
party and denounced President Johnson and 
his followers as political traitors. He was 
subsequently elected to Congress as a Re- 
publican. But while he was a loyal Repub- 
lican on the reconstruction issue, he differed 
with that party on the money question. In 
1869 he introduced into Congress a bill 
which, if it had become a law, would have 
revolutionized our monetary system. It 
would have relegated gold and silver to the 
realm of commodities, and made United 
States Treasury certificates the sole money 
of this nation. His speech in explanation 
and advocacy of his bill was one of the 
most masterly ever delivered in Congress. 
He said in the opening: 

"We want a uniform, sound, cheap, stable 
and elastic currency. All financial writers 
agree that paper money is the cheapest of 
any circulating medium. Stability is the 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 105 

fixedness of volume of the currency as com- 
pared with the property to be measured by 
it, and no one can doubt that paper money 
regulated by law is absolutely stable, while 
money coined of gold or silver, or any other 
substance limited in production and fluctu- 
ating as to amount, is unstable. But it is 
said that our money must be the same as 
the money of the world. I would as soon, 
or sooner, have our government, our laws, 
our institutions, the same as the rest of 
the world. We have divested our gov- 
ernment of every trait of despotism, 
every attribute of the monarchies of the old 
world save one, and that is the all-controll- 
ing and all-absorbing power by which the 
masses of the peoples of all nations of the 
earth have ever been enslaved — coined 
money." 

For this bill and speech General Butler 
was turned out of the Republican party, and 
the Democratic party, being controlled by 
August Belmont and other hard-money men, 
he became an Independent. Judge Rock- 
wood Hoar, the Republican candidate for 
Congress against him, called him a political 
widow. The retort of General Butler 
squelched his opponent and Butler was tri- 
umphantly elected. 

In 1878 General Butler ran for the office 
of governor of Massachusetts as an Inde- 
pendent. He was defeated by a small ma- 



106 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

jority at the close of one of the most strenu- 
ous campaigns ever witnessed. In 1882 he 
was successful in his ambition to be gover- 
nor of his native state. This practically 
closed the political career of this remarkable 
man, who is generally conceded to have 
been the worst abused man in America. He 
was hated by the aristocrats and favored by 
the common people. His subordinate gener- 
als, who had West Point diplomas, were 
bitter in their enmity towards him, but the 
common soldiers of his command almost 
worshipped him, while General Grant ap- 
preciated his military genius and achieve- 
ments very highly and paid him some fine 
compliments. He said: 

"I believe that if General Butler had had 
two corps commanders, such I could have 
selected had I known the material of the 
army as well as I did afterward, he would 
have captured Petersburg not only, but 
threatened Richmond itself, so as to have 
aided me materially." 

General Butler was a great lawyer. He 
received large fees from rich men, but often 
gave legal gratuitous advice to poor people. 
In case they were exceptionally worthy he 
would appear for them in court without 
charge. He never took a fee from a man 
who had served as a soldier in the Civil War. 
An ex-soldier told me that on one occasion 
he was being wronged and oppressed by a 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 107 

grasping landlord, and having served as 
a soldier under General Butler he laid the 
case before him. The General advised him 
to let his landlord sue him and he would 
appear for him. I told my avaricious land- 
lord that if he would not settle on the terms 
I had offered him my attorney had advised 
me to let him sue me. "Who is your attor- 
ney?" he asked. "Gen. Benjamin F. Butler/* 
I replied. "Well, if Butler is to fight for 
you, I guess I will surrender." 

After the war closed General Butler con- 
ducted a free pension agency in Boston, and 
hundreds, if not thousands, of the old sol- 
diers, secured pensions through it without 
cost to them. He was a many-sided man. 
Acquisitiveness was a strong element of his 
character, but his organ of benevolence was 
also large. He could not resist the plea of 
a beggar. On one occasion when I was his 
guest a poorly clad woman came into the 
parlor where we were in conversation and 
made a piteous appeal for a few dollars to 
pay her rent and purchase food and fuel. It 
was a cold evening and the woman was al- 
most frozen. The General listened to her 
piteous tale with admirable patience, and his 
sympathy was sincere, for as the tears rolled 
down his cheeks he handed her a roll of bills 
and said, "There, my good woman, that 
will pay your rent and warm and feed you 
and your children till this storm is over." 



108 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Acquisitiveness had abdicated for the time 
and benevolence reigned supreme. Had his 
visitor made a demand for money which she 
thought the General owed her, but on 
which he held a different opinion, it would 
have aroused the instinct of avarice and self- 
defense and he would probably have shown 
her the door. 

General Butler was not a member of any 
church, but he was a firm believer in an 
overruling Providence and in a future life. 



JOHN CLARK RIDPATH. 

John Clark Ridpath was born in Putnam 
County, Indiana, in 1840, and raised on a 
farm. He graduated from Indiana Asbury 
University in 1863, with high honors. In 
1879 the University of Syracuse, New York, 
conferred upon him the degree of Bachelor 
of Laws in recognition of his superior liter- 
ary attainments as shown in his able and 
voluminous historical works, his English 
Grammar, etc. His first history of the Uni- 
ted States was a grammar school text-book, 
published in 1873. His last history of the 
United States has but recently been issued. 
It comprises fifteen volumes. He had barely 
finished that most complete history of this 
country ever written when, in 1900, the An- 
gel of Death put a period to his work on 
earth. In the interim he had produced two 
of the greatest works ever written. The En- 
cyclopedia of Universal History, eight large 
volumes, and the Great Races of Mankind, 
in eight large volumes. Also the life and 
times of William E. Gladstone. All of his 
books are standard and have had large sales. 
Besides these more elaborate works Doctor 
109 



110 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Ridpath wrote a great number of brilliant 
essays and beautiful poems, some of which 
appeared in The Arena, of which he was the 
editor for two years, 1896- 1898. There are 
quite a large number still in manuscript in 
the hands of his daughter, Mary Ridpath 
Mann, of Chicago, who is her father's liter- 
ary legatee and to whom I am in part in- 
debted for the details of this sketch. It is 
Mrs. Mann's intention to edit and publish 
her father's essays and poems in a series 
of volumes. 

My first meeting with Doctor Ridpath 
occurred in 1881 at Greencastle, Ind. He 
was then a member of the faculty of his alma 
mater, which position he occupied for a 
number of years with distinguished ability. 

A committee, of which he was the chair- 
man, had invited me to lecture in that city 
on "Political Economy," a subject in which 
we were both much interested. I had ad- 
mired his writings and was prepared to like 
him personally. He measured up to my ideal 
of him, and more. His social qualities were 
so developed that I found in him a most 
charming companion. Our friendship be- 
gun then, grew as the years passed. 

I was living in Boston when Doctor Rid- 
path came there to edit The Arena and my 
wife and I gave him a reception, inviting 
some fifty or sixty of the literati of that city 
to meet him. It proved a very enjoyable 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 111 

occasion to the special guest and to all the 
others. After an hour of social intercourse 
and music I introduced my honored guest in 
a formal way, briefly reviewing his literary 
career and emphasizing his progressive 
views on sociology, political economy, etc. 
He responded in an informal talk that was 
replete with sound philosophy and poetic 
beauty. His speech was a gem, a rare in- 
tellectual treat. 

The music of that occasion was furnished 
by Prof. John Jay Watson, widely known 
as the "Ole Bull'' of America, and his 
daughter, Miss Anna Watson, who was al- 
most the equal of her father as a violinist 
and one of the greatest pianists this country 
has produced. The violin used by Professor 
Watson was presented to him by Ole Bull 
on the occasion of his first visit to that dis- 
tinguished Norwegian in his home at Chris- 
tiania. This tribute to my friend Watson 
is given here not only because he was a 
great musician, but also a grand man, and 
an intelligent and sincere reformer. 

Doctor Ridpath's books are to be found 
in the libraries, so they are available to the 
public, but his essays are not yet issued in 
book form, and as I desire to give my re'ad- 
ers a taste of them, I quote briefly from one 
entitled, "Is History a Science?" which ap- 
peared in The Arena for November, 1897. 

"The phrase, science of history, has en- 



112 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

tered into the philosophical language of the 
age. Whether such a phrase and the no- 
tions which it suggests are warranted in the 
present stage of inquiry is one of the pro- 
found questions which still remain unsolved 
at the end of a great and progressive cen- 
tury. 

"James Anthony Froude says: 'History 
is a dry subject; and there seems, indeed, 
something incongruous in the very con- 
nection of such words as science and his- 
tory.' 

"On the other hand, the profound Buckle 
declares that history is the science of 
sciences. 

"What then are we to believe? Is the 
history of mankind the science of sciences, 
as Buckle tells us, or is it nothing more than 
a box of letters, out of which we can make 
any meaning we please, as Froude tells us? 

"To my mind, it appears clear that in 
answering such a question we must first de- 
fine science. What is science? A science is 
the systematic arrangement of the laws by 
which any group of facts or phenomena is 
governed. The term law used in the defini- 
tion signifies no more than the observed or- 
der which the facts or phenomena hold con- 
stantly to one another. From this it is clear 
that we must have facts to begin with. In 
order that there be a science there must not 
only be facts, but the facts must be asso- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 113 

dated facts. They must be in sequence or 
correlation with each other. They must be 
bound together by some common principle. 
They must have a logical and a chronologi- 
cal relation. They must be of such sort as 
to yield to classification and arrangement 
into groups and categories; for without this 
quality of association and relation, though 
the field of inquiry be piled with facts, there 
can be no science. If in the nature of 
things the facts stand apart, then the scien- 
tific principle cannot be established over 
them. There may be chaos and force, but 
no science. It is not enough that we have 
facts and the gathering of the facts in groups 
under the laws of logical association. There 
must also be an interpretation of the facts, 
else there is no science of them. The old 
world was as full of facts as the new, but 
not as full of science. It was as an interpre- 
ter that the man of antiquity was so great a 
failure. 

"The interpretation of facts and phenom- 
ena out of the unknown to the known is the 
very substance of science. Science explains 
in terms of the known the thing that was 
before unknown. She discovers the law by 
which the things are bound together. She 
gives us a clue by which to thread the cham- 
ber of the labyrinth. She puts into our 
hands the endless chain of causation and 



114 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

teaches us to follow it link by link. She 
uncovers the living principle of things, so 
that the facts around us which before 
seemed dead, inane and chaotic, become 
quickened into a dramatic and beautiful life. 
Interpretation, however, is only one of sev- 
eral principles that enter into science. But 
if we stop here we have only the half of 
science, and that the poorer half. Science 
demands that we shall be able to tell what 
will come to pass hereafter. Interpretation 
looks only at the present and the past. If 
science stops short with simple interpreta- 
tion she would hardly be worthy of praise; 
but she also adds the gift of prophecy. 
Science understands the mysteries of the 
future. She reveals, at least in part, what 
is to be. She sees, as if with prophetic eye, 
the facts of the universe, instinct with inher- 
ent forces, approximating and entering into 
union, or repelling and flying asunder. She 
sees collisions and catastrophes, the mar- 
riages and births and deaths of nature. She 
marks the waxing and waning moons of a 
thousand cycles. She sees the falling of 
next winter's snows, the blushing of next 
June's roses. She sees all the shifting 
changes in the secular order of the world 
until the final cataclysm, when the floods of 
water having retired into the caverns below 
and cold having taken the throne of nature, 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 115 

the earth shall become a dead and icy clod 
in silent orbit, where once we traveled with 
our hopes and loves." 

This is a masterly definition of science 
as she will be and as she is now only begin- 
ning to be. The reader cannot fail to note 
the poetic spirit that gives charm to the 
writings of this great essayist. 

But to proceed with our extracts, for we 
are only giving extracts from this great es- 
say: 

"What is history? It is the movement 
of the human race interpreted. It is the 
facts and events of human life arranged on 
the lines of the causes that produce them. 
It is a record of the thoughts and deeds of 
the human race considered as a rational 
product under the reign of law. Whatever 
man has accomplished with mind or hand, 
tongue or implement, with voice or will, 
with pen or chisel or hatchet or spear or 
sword, with plow or keel or level, with fire 
or wind or steam or battery, that is a part 
of history. Man has quarreled and fought, 
and conquered and been conquered. He has 
burned towns, entered into conspiracies and 
torn up governments, and sacked and pil- 
laged until the traces of his madness and the 
stains of the blood he has shed have marked 
every square rood of the world. He has 
kindled the fires of philosophy, he has writ- 



116 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

ten books filled with immortal thoughts. He 
has listened to the rhythm of the deep, the 
sighing of the infinite and written poetry. 
He has dreamed great dreams and sung 
immortal songs. He has given to stone 
and bronze the forms of life, to marble the 
inspiration of beauty, to canvas the splen- 
dors of creation. He has invaded the fero- 
cious elements of nature, and they have 
quailed around him like the creatures of 
the menagerie before the lion tamer. He 
has stroked the wind and coaxed the steam 
and smoothed the mane of the growling 
thunder. 

"On plain and field, in hut and palace, by 
river bank and ocean shore, on mountain 
and desert, in all lands and on all seas, in all 
times and in all places are seen the traces 
and monuments of man's career, and the 
marks of his hand, the shadows of his brain. 
These things are the facts of history. They 
are the things to be considered and inter- 
preted. The facts are as bounteous as the 
air and as exhaustless as the sea. These 
facts are the basis of a science. No other 
science is so richly endowed with facts. It 
is when we come to the classification and 
arrangement of the facts that the difficulty 
begins. These facts have plans and pur- 
poses for their origin. They have thought 
for their principal material. They have un- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 117 

manageable passions and the capricious im- 
pulses of human nature for their initial 
forces." 

Our writer now proceeds to point out 
some of the faults of historians, prejudice 
being the chief thought. He says, "Em- 
barrassed with the perplexities of the prob- 
lem, historians generally find a way out by 
assigning as a cause the thing which they 
themselves would wish to be the cause. 

"If the historian is a Romanist and the 
thing is good, Romanism caused it; if he 
is a Protestant and the thing is bad, then 
Romanism caused it, if good reformation 
caused it. If the writer is a Tory then the 
bad things arise from radicalism; if he is 
a radical then all good is born of innovation 
and all evil of reactionary bourbonism. 

"Our Civil War was caused by state rights 
heresy, says the national union man. It was 
the attempted destruction of individual 
rights, says the old secessionist. 

"I asked a preacher the cause of crime, 
and he said it was original sin. I asked a 
doctor and he said it was bad health, a law- 
yer said it was the violation of law. Is Hume 
to be trusted? Yes, if the matter under dis- 
cussion is not involved with his metaphysi- 
cal opinions. Is Macaulay to be believed? 
Yes, provided the thing he writes about is 
not the character of Whig statesmanship 
and the reign of William III." 



118 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Speaking of the prophetic character of 
history, Doctor Ridpath admits that in this 
regard history has not got beyond generali- 
ties. It is only prepared to say that: "The 
nation that is vicious, unjust, luxurious and 
effeminate will certainly and speedily fall into 
decay and end in ruin and overthrow. 

"The nation that is vigorous and free will 
just as certainly take possession of the high 
places of civilization and inherit the earth. 
Such principles as these we may accept as 
certain in their results. These are high and 
general laws that are written with an iron 
pen. There is for men and nations one law 
that cannot be evaded, and that is, good for 
the good, and bad for the bad. This law is 
about the only one which has thus far been 
made out from the eternal code. That is, 
it is the only law which enables us to dis- 
cern historically what shall come to pass in 
the hereafter. We are able to say what we 
know, that people and nations will rise or 
fall, will become great or become nothing, 
just in proportion as they are free or not 
free, independent or not independent, virtu- 
ous or not virtuous, and, I had almost said, 
as they are poor or rich. If great wealth 
and luxury can co-exist with perpetuity, it 
has not yet been shown by a single instance 
in the history of man." 

The temptation to quote further from this 
able and interesting essay is very strong. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 119 

But want of space forbids, and besides, we 
have got to a good place to stop. The les- 
son is complete. The historian who is to be 
of real service to the world must discard 
sectarian spectacles and rise above partisan 
prejudice. This Dr. Ridpath has done to a 
degree far beyond most, if not all, other 
historians. 



HORACE GREELEY. 

Verily, these are times that try men's 
souls, and measure their qualities, and 
weigh their characters, and estimate their 
worth, as no other times ever did, or could. 
The quickened pulse of thought has vital- 
ized the whole people, until the public ear 
is keen of hearing, the public eye sharp of 
sight, the public judgment quick of action, 
and the public heart warm and responsive. 
The universality of intelligence, and the 
ubiquity of the newspaper, bring passing 
events and public action into review as dis- 
tinctly and inevitably as the brilliant light 
of the magic lantern does the shifting scenes 
of the panorama. Socrates, Plato, and 
Pythagoras had few followers, and little 
fame, while they dwelt among men, because 
of the limited means of communication and 
the want of intellectual and moral develop- 
ment among the people. Now the whole 
atmosphere is rife with the grand thoughts 
and glowing words of philosophers and 
prophets, of all ages and countries. The 
sages of old have thousands of disciples 
now to one in their own day, which fact is 
120 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 121 

due to the universal dissemination of liter- 
ature. Robert Emmet, when asked to name 
his last request, before dying a martyr to 
Irish freedom, said, "Let no man write my 
epitaph till other men, in other times, can 
do me justice." It was a wise request, but 
one no American patriot, prophet, or sage 
need prefer in these times, for this age is 
passing correct and righteous judgment 
upon its own great men — more just and 
righteous than the judgments it passes upon 
the immortal heroes of the past. The good 
that men do lives after them, the evil is 
often buried in their graves. The historian 
is always more generous than just (unless 
dealing with foes), hence historic characters 
stand stripped of their faults, and with their 
virtues magnified till their cotemporaries 
would scarcely recognize them in their his- 
toric garb. I do not condemn this. "Let 
the evil die in its own dark death, but the 
good live on forever." I refer to this fact 
simply to show that we judge our cotempo- 
raries more correctly than we do those who 
lived before us. 

Again, genius and talents have outlooks 
and opportunities now that they did not 
possess in the ages past. An illiterate back- 
woods boy came up by the way of the ex- 
periences of a farmer's life, a boatman's 
toils, and a country lawyer's struggles, to 
the leadership of the greatest nation on 



122 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

earth, and a fame that is world-wide and im- 
mortal as history. 

About ninety years ago, a son was born 
to a toiling young couple, who lived in a 
cabin on a poor little farm in the old 
Granite State (New Hampshire). They 
were moderate people in all respects, limited 
in education, modest in ambition, and with 
no leading thought but to pay for their lit- 
tle farm, develop it into a comfortable home, 
and live a quiet life. This worthy pair 
never arose above these modest hopes; in- 
deed, they did not fully realize them, but 
worked hard, lived hard, and died poor. 
The boy had genius, the fires of which 
burned within his soul. He had ambition, 
the demands of which proved a constant 
stimulus to effort. He had a destiny that 
lifted him out of the quiet and obscure life 
his father led into a field of thought and 
action, rich and wide. He became a disciple 
of Faust, and for years he stood at the 
printer's case, giving currency to the 
thoughts of other men who wrote for the 
paper on which he worked. Then he began 
to submit his own views to paper, and 
they were put into print. His ability se- 
cured him a position as assistant editor. 
Here he labored until the field seemed to 
him too limited, and he went to New York 
to grow up with the great city, and he did 
grow up with it — he grew as fast as the city 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 123 

did. He arrived there, friendless and pen- 
niless, about seventy years ago. After nu- 
merous trials, and struggles, and discour- 
agements, he succeeded in establishing a 
newspaper that, under his editorial manage- 
ment, soon became the greatest and most 
influential journal in the whole world. It 
achieved a popularity and influence entirely 
exceptional in political literature, and this 
not because of the popularity of the views it 
taught, but in spite of their unpopularity, 
for Horace Greeley and his Tribune were 
always in the van of every reform, and sub- 
ject to the criticism of the conservative and 
the timeserver. But the New York Tribune 
is but one block in the monument that is 
to render immortal the name . and fame of 
Horace Greeley, and one of the least im- 
portant. Remove it entirely and his great- 
ness remains undimmed. Indeed, the only 
blurs and blots upon his fair fame are the 
mistakes he committed in yielding to the 
demands of his party for a compromise of 
principle, with a view to party success. 
This all journalists have done, and this 
Horace Greeley did, at times, in his earlier 
career. It is to his credit, however, that he 
grew stronger as he grew older, until he 
became entirely independent. That inde- 
pendence was shown in a manner most 
striking, when he signed the bail bond that 
opened the prison door to Jefferson Davis. 



124 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Mr. Davis' wife visited her husband's attor- 
ney, Charles O'Conor, of New York, and 
said to him: 

"My husband is a sick man and unless he 
is released from prison very soon, he will 
die. Can you not devise some way to get 
him out of jail?" 

"Madam, there is one man who can se- 
cure your husband's release. That man is 
Horace Greeley. I know how Mr. Greeley 
is regarded by southern people, but they do 
not know him. He is one of the greatest- 
hearted men that graces this planet. If you 
will go to him and tell him your story, as 
you have told it to me, and say to him, 'Mr. 
Greeley, you can save my husband's life, and 
I ask you, in the name of that God whom 
we both serve, and of that human sympathy 
which makes the world akin, to do it,' he 
will give you his promise to do anything in 
his power to aid you, and he will keep that 
promise." 

Mr. Greeley listened to the pathetic ap- 
peal of the sorrowing woman, and, with 
tears coursing down his furrowed cheeks, he 
said, "Madam, if I can save your husband's 
life, I will do it." 

This is the true story of how Horace 
Greeley came to sign a bail bond for Jeffer- 
son Davis and secure his release from prison. 

Mr. Greeley was at that time about to 
receive the Republican party nomination for 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 125 

governor of New York. His friends urged 
that if he signed the bond of Jeff Davis he 
could never be governor of New York. 

"I know that/' he replied, "but I shall 
keep my word with that woman at any 
cost." 

It is not as a politician that Horace 
Greeley is to be classed in history. Indeed, 
it is not as a politician people regard him 
to-day, but as a philanthropist, reformer, and 
political economist. Benevolence was the 
leading trait in his character. In every con- 
flict between his heart and his head, his 
heart was sure to win, and this is why peo- 
ple love him so well, and mourn him so 
deeply. His kindness of heart and love for 
humanity prompted him not only to give 
up his substance to the needy about him, 
but it led him into the advocacy of every 
plan that promised to better the condition 
of humanity. He opposed slavery, and so 
strongly did he oppose the cruel institution 
that he became the chief object of hate in 
the sight of its friends. He was a friend to 
the poor, and hence ready to embrace any 
movement for their relief. He was a Fou- 
rierite, a co-operationist, a temperance man 
and a health reformer, and, besides Frank- 
lin, the greatest practical economist of this 
country. His works on agriculture, and 
political and domestic economy, are full of 



126 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

such wisdom as make a people prosperous 
and a country rich. 

A few weeks ago Horace Greeley was a 
candidate for the presidency, and, as such, 
subject to the usual fate of candidates for 
that high office — extravagant praise from 
one party, unqualified abuse from the other. 
To-day he lies cold in his grave, at Green- 
wood, and around his tomb a nation stands 
uncovered, in silent grief — a grief so deep 
and sincere as to blot out the last vestige 
of partisan bitterness, and, while we forget 
the politician and presidential aspirant, we 
embalm forever in our hearts the memory of 
the great philanthropist, reformer, and edi- 
tor. 

This sketch was written for a popular 
magazine soon after Mr. Greeley's death. It 
is as good as I could write now, so I use it. 



SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 

Susan B. Anthony is one of the noblest 
women that ever graced this planet. This 
opinion is based upon a personal acquaint- 
ance with her of almost half a century, and it 
is amply sustained by her public life record 
of services rendered, not to her own sex 
only, but to humanity at large. Not to in- 
clude her in this series of distinguished peo- 
ple I have met would be an injustice to my 
readers, rather than to my esteemed friend, 
Miss Anthony, who needs no tribute from 
me, as her place in the true temple of fame 
is already secure. My first recollections of 
what is called the woman's rights movement 
are associated with her, and from her ad- 
vent into that field, more than fifty years 
ago. She has been in the limelight of public 
opinion, up to the present time, and she has 
never suffered from the exposure. She has 
won the plaudits of the progressive and the 
respect of the conservative elements of the 
world. This, because she is a woman of 
unsullied reputation, as well as large ability, 
great industry, unflagging energy and a 
modest sincerity that is unmistakable. She 

127 



128 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

is thoroughly honest and terribly in earnest. 
In the early days of her career the para- 
graphists sometimes attempted to be witty 
at her expense, but she pursued the even 
tenor of her way with as much equanimity 
as though there was not a newspaper re- 
porter in the world. She was apparently in- 
different to criticism, sarcasm or praise. To 
her friends she would say, "My critics are 
ignorantly doing me and my cause a serv- 
ice." 

Miss Anthony was never noted for that 
beauty of face that charms the sensualist 
and wins the favor of the thoughtless or 
superficial observer, but instead, she 
possessed a charm of manner and loveliness 
of character that wins the affection of all 
truly loyal-hearted men and women. Her 
qualities are of the kind that do not lose 
their charm with the passing years. She is 
not charming, but delightful. In the parlor 
she is entertaining in a high degree; on the 
platform she is forceful, logical, witty, sarcas- 
tic, eloquent and convincing, hence popular. 
Her power over an audience is a surprise to 
those who have not studied her closely, but 
her intimate friends know that she is won- 
derfully magnetic, as well as forcible and elo- 
quent. Perhaps the readers may ask why 
Miss Anthony did not marry, if this quality 
so highly abounds in her nature. I reply 
that she is wedded to her life work, and she 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 129 

has offered upon the altar of public duty all 
considerations of connubial happiness. I am 
sure that she has made a personal sacrifice 
in this direction. Had she not heeded the 
call of duty in the field of reform she might 
have been a loving wife and model mother, 
with perhaps some literary fame. I said 
this of her in a magazine article thirty-five 
years ago, and she thanked me for saying it, 
and added, "You, my friend, understand me 
as few do, and as the world at large never 
will." 

Susan B. Anthony was born to wealth, 
yet she so despised idleness that on complet- 
ing her education she resolved to make her- 
self useful and at once began teaching, and 
followed that calling for some years, earning 
golden opinions from pupils, parents and 
school directors. But, though her services 
were as valuable as those of the best male 
teachers, she received only ^one-third as 
much pay. The injustice of this fired her 
soul, and to it is due in large measure what- 
ever she has said or done as a woman's 
rights reformer. 

Her first effort as a public speaker was in 
the cause of temperance. She was sent as a 
delegate to a state temperance convention 
at Syracuse, N. Y. The convention, made 
up largely of preachers, refused to recognize 
her because she was a woman. This insult 
to her sex still further tended to convince 



130 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

her that the most needed reform was along 
the lines of woman's emancipation from 
the superstition of sex inferiority, through 
which women had been tyrannized over and 
treated unjustly in the family, the church, 
the state and in all the relations of life. In 
this instance she defended her right to a 
seat in the convention with eloquence and 
force of argument, but those disciples of 
Paul stood by his doctrine that a woman 
should not be allowed to speak in meeting, 
and ruled Miss Anthony out of order. She 
was defeated at the time, but she had the 
courage of a martyr hero, who grows 
stronger by defeat, and wrests victory from 
the jaws of death, or by a lifelong siege 
against the strongholds of fossilized despot- 
ism and injustice. She finally won renown 
in the temperance arena, also in the field 
of educational reform. The Woman's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union owes its existence to 
the pioneer work of Susan B. Anthony 
more than to any other woman, or man, 
though she was never honored by member- 
ship in that organization. She did not ask 
for such recognition, nor desire it, for the 
reason that it was not broad enough for her. 
Miss Anthony is a Christian of the liberal 
type. She holds, with the Universalists, that 
God is too good to damn any. of His 
prodigal sons or daughters, and with the 
Unitarians, that man is too good to be 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 131 

damned. She does not believe in the ortho- 
dox devil or hell, but in the more Christian 
institution, styled by the Catholics purga- 
tory, a place of penitence and reform, where 
sin-sick souls are purged of their sins, and 
by development of their moral consciousness 
and their intellectual faculties fitted for a 
better and happier life than they have known 
in this world. Miss Anthony and her life- 
long friend and co-worker, Mrs. Elizabeth 
Cady Stanton, believed in the Declaration of 
Independence, and they strove with might 
and main to secure an amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States that would 
bring that instrument into line with Jeffer- 
son's immortal document, and thus make 
this government in fact, as it is in name, a 
democratic republic. 

She sought to work with political parties, 
and, on failing to get the Republican con- 
vention to adopt a Republican platform, she 
would go to the Democratic convention, 
and, failing there, she would attend the Na- 
tional Greenback or Populists' convention, 
where she usually succeeded in securing an 
endorsement of her views, but though she 
and other eloquent women entered the cam- 
paign and did valiant service for the platform 
and ticket, the old parties would make com- 
mon cause against the new and defeat it. 
Miss Anthony made a noted campaign in 
Kansas in 1867, and at its close she estab- 



132 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

lished a woman's rights journal in New 
York, 'The Revolution," of which Parker 
Pillsbury was for a time the editor. That 
famous man was an associate of Garrison, 
Phillips and others in the anti-slavery cause. 
Mr. Pillsbury was one of the brainiest and 
most eloquent men I ever knew, and every 
way one of the best. He was honest, brave 
and true. I loved him as a dear friend and I 
revere his memory, as does Miss Anthony 
and all genuine souls who knew him. 

Miss Anthony was born in Massachusetts, 
of Quaker parentage, in 1820, but her fam- 
ily removed to Rochester, N. Y., during her 
girlhood, and that city has been her home 
since. Despite the fact that she is eighty- 
five years of age, she is still at work for the 
cause of freedom and justice. She attended 
the International Council of Women at Ber- 
lin in 1904 and was an honored guest of the 
Emperor. 

Note. — Since this sketch was written Miss 
Anthony has passed to the higher life. This 
event occurred March 13, 1906, in the home 
of her sister at Rochester, N. Y. Some two 
hours before she lost consciousness she said 
to her friend, Rev. Anna Shaw, "To think 
that I have had more than sixty years of 
struggle for a little liberty, and to die with- 
out it seems cruel. " Her friend replied, 
"Your legacy will be freedom for all women- 
kind after you are gone." With a smile, she 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 133 

responded, "If so, I have lived to some pur- 
pose." Then she added, "Perhaps I can do 
more over yonder than I did here." She left 
her whole estate to the cause she loved, with 
Rev. Anna Shaw and Miss Lucy Anthony as 
her legal representatives. By order of the 
mayor, the flags on public buildings were at 
half mast on the day of her funeral 



ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS. 

In 1844 a mesmerist visited Poughkeep- 
sie, N. Y., and lectured upon that wonder- 
ful science. Among the persons whom he 
put into the mesmeric state there was a boy 
of seventeen years of age, son of a shoe- 
maker by the name of Davis, who proved to 
be the best subject for demonstrating the 
science that he found there. That boy was 
very illiterate, being barely able to read, 
yet, when mesmerized, he displayed great 
learning. Rev. Dr. Fishbough was so 
greatly interested in the phenomena pre- 
sented that he engaged a stenographer to 
report what came from the lips of this boy, 
Andrew Jackson Davis, and two years later 
a book was published with the attractive 
title of "Nature's Divine Revelations," every 
word of which, except the introduction, hav- 
ing come from the lips, if not from the brain, 
of that unlearned boy while in an uncon- 
scious state, and who in his normal condi- 
tion could not comprehend his own utter- 
ances. That book of over seven hundred 
pages covered almost every subject of hu- 
man inquiry, involved in science, philosophy 
134 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 135 

and religion. It created quite a sensation at 
the time, and is still widely read by stu- 
dents of psychic science. This book was 
followed soon afterward by a series of 
books, four volumes, under the general title 
of "The Great Harmonia," with sub-titles 
as follows: Volume i, "The Physician" ; 
Volume 2, "The Teacher"; Volume 3, "The 
Seer"; and Volume 4, "The Reformer"; all 
given by young Davis while in an uncon- 
scious hypnotic trance. The first of those 
volumes of the "Harmonial System of 
Philosophy" purports to be a revelation of 
the origin and nature of man ; the philosophy 
of health, disease, sleep, death, psychology 
and healing. The second volume deals with 
the spirit, its nature and culture; the exist- 
ence and nature of God, the philosophy of 
immortality, the spirit's destiny, etc. The 
other two volumes cover about every field 
of reform in an able, scholarly and radical 
manner. Some twenty other books have 
come through or from this wonderful man. 
I had read the first series of five books 
before I met the author of them, if he can 
properly be called the author, and I was 
curious to see him. While on a visit to 
New York in 1867 I visited Mr. Davis at 
his home in Orange, N. J., in company 
with a Presbyterian friend of mine, L. H. 
Tyler, a wholesale merchant of New York. 
I was armed with a letter of introduction 



136 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

from Parker Pillsbury and one from Pro! 
Samuel R. Wells; also a commission from 
the editor of the Indianapolis Journal, to 
interview Mr. Davis for that paper. On 
reading my letters of introduction, Mr. 
Davis said: 

"I'm always glad to hear from Brother 
Pillsbury, but you did not need a letter of 
introduction to me, for I know you through 
your writings, and I am delighted to meet 
you." 

I introduced my friend Tyler, whom 
Mr. Davis greeted most cordially, and then 
led the way to his study. Our visit lasted 
three hours, during which time, at my re- 
quest, our host gave us a brief history of 
his wonderful experiences and a summary 
of his religious views, which latter may be 
summed up in a paragraph : 

"God is the author of Nature, hence Na- 
ture is Diving. Man is the ultimate of 
earth, the crowning work of Deity, possess- 
ing all the attributes of God in a finite de- 
gree, and through the Divine law of prog- 
ress he is destined to reach that ideal state 
which the Hindoos designate as Nirvana, 
and which Jesus describes as oneness with 
our Father. Be ye perfect as your Father 
in heaven is perfect, was a practical com- 
mand which all can and will obey. Every 
prodigal will finally turn back toward the 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 137 

Father's house and be welcomed by Him 
as a beloved son or daughter." 

Mr. Davis told us that beginning as an 
unconscious trance medium between the high 
realms of the spiritual world and this world, 
he had evoluted into a state of conscious 
communion with those exalted beings, who, 
having arisen out of their earthly bodies, 
centuries ago, and are the guardian angels of 
those still in the body, some of them being 
tutelary gods of the tribes or nations to 
which they belonged. Yaveh, translated 
Jehovah in our Bible, was in the olden time 
the tutelary god of the Hebrews. Being 
clairvoyant and clairaudient, Mr. Davis sees 
spiritual beings, he said, and talks with 
them, face to face, as freely as he does with 
his earthly friends. On occasion he leaves 
his earthly, or, as Paul terms it, his natu- 
ral, body, and in his spiritual body visits the 
celestial spheres for a brief time and returns 
with memories of what he saw and heard 
in that realm. 

Mr. Davis impressed me as a man of per- 
fect sincerity, and at times, as he talked, his 
face seemed illuminated. His earnestness 
was unmistakable; he evidently believes that 
what he says is true. On bidding this won- 
derful man adieu, my friend and I took our 
departure. Mr. Tyler was the first to speak. 
"That," said he, "is the greatest man I ever 



138 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

met, and one of the best. I have believed 
him to be a humbug, but my opinion is en- 
tirely changed. I am greatly obliged to you 
for taking me with you to see him." 

Since that day, now nearly forty years 
ago, I have met Mr. Davis a number of 
times and talked with him quite freely. He 
is a man of superior mental ability, having 
a large brain, with the intellectual, moral 
and religious organs highly developed, and 
he impresses one as a man of high intelli- 
gence and broad culture. He has written 
with his own hand, but, as he claims, under 
inspiration or spirit guidance, over twenty 
books since the five books given through 
him while in an unconscious trance. The era 
of modern spiritualism dates from 1848, two 
years after the publication of Davis's first 
book, and Andrew Jackson Davis has been 
styled the prophet or forerunner of spiritual- 
ism. He was more than that. He at once 
pronounced the raps heard at Hydesville, 
in 1848, as telegraphic signals from the 
spirit world, and he founded the first jour- 
nal, 'The Herald of Progress," which ad- 
vocated spiritualism as a religion, founded 
upon revelations direct from the spirit 
spheres to this age. He was for many years 
the leading lecturer upon the spiritualistic 
platform. He is still living upon earth, and, 
although almost eightv years of age, he is 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 139 

quite active in mind and body, and does 
not look to be above sixty-five. He 
took a college course in medicine some 
years ago, getting his degree like any ordi- 
nary student, and is now engaged in the 
regular practice of medicine in the city of 
Boston. His card reads: Andrew Jackson 
Davis, Physician to Soul and Body. 



RYiLAND T. BROWN. 

When some sixty years ago it devolved 
upon Governor Wright of Indiana to ap- 
point a state geologist, he asked Dr. Ryland 
T. Brown of Crawfordsville to take that 
office, and to make an investigation into the 
hidden mineral resources of that common- 
wealth. That the Governor made a wise 
choice is demonstrated by the practical re- 
sults which followed. There was, I believe, 
but one iron furnace in Indiana, the Rich- 
land furnace, in Green County, built and 
owned by that enterprising man, Andrew 
Downing, who used charcoal in smelting 
the iron ore, which he converted into pots, 
kettles, stoves, etc., to supply the local de- 
mand for such things, and pig iron, which 
he shipped to Louisville, Ky., on a small 
steamer which he purchased for that pur- 
pose and put under the command of Cap- 
tain Mark Shryer. That steamer, the Rich- 
land, was the first boat of the kind that ever 
awoke the echoes of the forests and fields 
that lined the shores of White River, and 
it could ride the waves of that small stream 
only when the spring rains had filled it al- 
140 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 141 

most to the top of its banks. The vast beds 
of bituminous coal that lay beneath the soil 
of the state were then undiscovered. But 
Doctor Brown went out with his spade and 
pick and discovered them. Omitting detail, 
it is but just to the memory of that pioneer 
mineralologist and geologist to say, that he 
did more to develop the mineral wealth of 
Indiana than any other man, though he has 
had some able successors in the office of 
state geologist. Nor was this all that he 
did for that state; Doctor Brown was an all 
around scientist. As a chemist he has had 
few equals, and he used his knowledge of 
that science in the interests of agriculture 
in a practical way, and to an extent far be- 
yond that of any other man of his time. He 
was the most valuable man that ever filled 
the position of chemist in the United States 
Bureau of Agriculture. As an entomologist 
and pomologist he ranked with Dr. John A. 
Warder and other distinguished men in 
those lines of scientific research. I made 
the personal acquaintance of Doctor Brown 
in 1864. He was then, and had been for 
some years, professor of natural science in 
the Northwestern Christian University at 
Indianapolis. I was invited by President 
Benton to deliver a lecture to the students 
in the chapel of the university and 
Doctor Brown was among the profes- 
sors who honored me with their presence. 



142 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

I was introduced to him by President Ben- 
ton and from that time we were friends. In 
1866 I began the publication in that city of 
the Northwestern Farmer (now the Indiana 
Farmer). I engaged Doctor Brown as the 
chief of my staff of writers on scientific 
farming. His essays did much to give char- 
acter and popularity to my journal. He 
continued with me, until 1871, I sold the 
Farmer to Mr. Kingsbury, who is still the 
editor of it and who retained Doctor Brown 
on his staff until his death at the advanced 
age of 82. 

Ryland T. Brown was born in Indiana 
in 1805 an d raised on a farm. He got a pri- 
mary education in the district schools. He 
became a physician and was successful in 
that profession, but while in practice at 
Crawfordsville he took a college course, 
graduating with high honors at the age of 
forty. He was for some years professor of 
chemistry and toxicology in the Indiana 
College of Medicine and Surgery. In addi- 
tion to his other functions this widely 
learned man was a minister of the gospel in 
the Christian or Disciple Church for forty 
years, and he ranked with the ablest ex- 
pounders of the faith of that denomination. 
He was broad in his views and thoroughly 
Christian in his character and conduct. All 
who knew him esteemed him, and those 
who knew him best reverenced him and 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 143 

loved him. I regard it a privilege to pay 
this brief but sincere tribute to my es- 
teemed friend and co-worker. 

Doctor Brown was endowed with the gift 
of poesy in a high degree, though he did 
not often express himself in that form of 
literary composition, but on rare occasions 
his o'erburdened soul could not be content 
with prose composition, but yielded to the 
inspiration of the divine muse. 

January, 1872, he handed my wife the fol- 
lowing letter and poem, which she printed 
in the February issue of her magazine, "The 
Ladies' Own," and at her kind suggestion 
I reproduce both with much pleasure, under 
the title which, with the author's approval, 
she put to the poem: 

"A POETIC PROPHECY." 

"M. Cora Bland, Editor Ladies' Own 
Magazine. Esteemed Friend: In rum- 
maging a drawer of old papers I found the 
following lines which bear date 1851. I had 
suffered myself to become deeply interested 
in the struggle to prevent the extension of 
slavery into the territories of the United 
States. The compromises of 1850, which 
gave the Fugitive Slave Law to the country, 
appeared to be a triumph of the opposition 
and so greatly discouraged were the friends 
of universal freedom that many went back 
and walked with us no more. With these 



144 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

gloomy surroundings these lines were writ- 
ten, confidently believing that the time 
would come when they could be read." 



I. 

Avaunt! ye busy scenes of flesh and blood — 
Of groaning ills but slightly mixed with good — 

Of moonbeam hopes that darkling fade away 
Into the deepest gloom that earth inherits; 

And evanescent joys that will not stay — 
Avaunt! "I rather would consort with spirits." 

II. 

Spirits of the mighty dead, who never die, 
Whose burning thoughts along the pathway lie 

Of ancient lore, O come and deign to fling 
Your shad'wy mantle o'er my musing soul, 

And raise my grov'ling thoughts that fondly cling 
To earth, above its sordid, base control. 

III. 

Thou Language! Thou, the noblest gift of Heaven, 
To garner up our thougths, art kindly given, 

And stamp with immortality this dream 
Of fleeting life. What were the mighty past, 

If shone not here, thy thought-embalming beam 
To light its primal chaos, dark and vast. 

IV. 

Thou Language! Whose mysterious chain, alone 
Doth bind the past and present into one, 

And give the living soul the power to drink 
Deep draughts of lore from willing springs of eld, 

That deathless thoughts may lend the power to 
think, 
And print our souls with scenes we ne'er beheld. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 145 



By thy mysterious voice thou bid'st us climb 
The mount of mind, where Sage of olden time 

And Heaven-inspir'd Seer hath meekly stood, 
And seized th' immortal thoughts that round them 
spread, 

Then gave a rich repast of mental food 
To feast our souls — the living from the dead. 

VI. 

Spirit that fearless raised "the potent rod 
Of Amram's son/' when proud oppression trod, 

With iron heel, the chosen race to earth — 
Thou paralyzed with fear the tyrant's hand, 

And led the unfettered thousands forth, 
To give them freedom in a better land. 

VII. 

A voice — a warning voice from Egypt comes — 
A beacon light shines from her ruin'd tombs; 

Then let the nations of the earth beware 
Of binding chains on MAN, whom God hath form'd 

To till His soil, and breathe the fragrant air 
Of liberty — while harmless, all unharmed. 

VIII. 

What boots a nation's wealth — a nation's fame, 
If foul oppression's deeds shall stain her name — 

What though her pyramids may pierce the sky, 
Her serried hosts may count their millions strong — 

There is an ear that hears the plaintive cry 
Of the oppress'd, and will avenge their wrong. 

IX. 

Spirit of Freedom! thy strength hath ever been 
Jehovah's mighty arm — the hand unseen; 

And though thy foes have often seem'd to gain 
A moment's triumph, yet the blood they shed 

Has cried to Heaven above, nor cried in vain, 
For vengeance on the victor's guilty head. 



146 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

X. 

Go read the tyrant's doom, from days of old — 
Go bid the ruin'd marts their tale unfold — 

Go learn, where broken columns strew the plain, 
That Justice does not always sleep, nor long 

The crush'd and trodden millions cry in vain 
To Him who guards the weak, against the strong. 

XL 

But, O ! what sick'ning scenes shall blot the page 
Of faithful history, e'er that glorious age 

Of Justice, Truth and Righteousness shall rise? 
What lessons, hard to learn, must yet be learned 
by man — 

How earth shall struggle, groan and agonize — 
Are things a prophet's eye alone can scan. 



FRED P. STANTON. 

When, in 1857, Kansas, which then in- 
cluded Colorado, was in the throes of civil 
war over the question whether it should 
become a slave-holding state or a free 
commonwealth, Fred P. Stanton was secre- 
tary of that turbulent territory. He had 
been appointed to that office by President 
Buchanan, who had been elected as a pro- 
slavery man and who favored the pro- 
slavery party in Kansas. Robert T. Walker 
of Mississippi was appointed governor 
by the President, and Fred P. Stanton 
of Tennessee secretary of state, for that 
territory. Those men were expected to 
favor the pro-slavery party. Governor 
Walker shirked the responsibility when 
the crisis came by visiting Washington 
until it had passed, leaving Secretary 
Stanton in the position of acting gov- 
ernor. A convention had been held at 
Lecompton, composed largely of delegates 
elected by voters from Missouri, and a pro- 
slavery constitution had been adopted. The 
free state men of Kansas asked the Gover- 
nor to call the legislature together in extra 
session for the purpose of authorizing a 
147 



148 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

vote of the people of Kansas on that con- 
stitution. Walker did not dare to do that, 
lest he lose his official head, so he put the 
responsibility on Stanton, who met the 
crisis boldly. As Walker bade Stanton 
adieu the latter said to him, "It is probable 
that you will read my message convening 
the legislature in extra session before you 
reach Washington, and he did. The Presi- 
dent also read it and he very promptly re- 
moved Stanton from office, but he did not 
possess the power to revoke that last official 
act of a genuine democrat, which act re- 
sulted in making Kansas a free state. That 
proclamation is a historic document of value, 
but so far as I know it is to be found only 
among the archives of the state of Kansas. 
I deem it proper to give it here, which I 
am able to do through the courtesy of Mrs. 
Laura Stanton Moss of Topeka, a daughter 
of Governor Stanton. 

"To the Members of the Legislative As- 
sembly of the Territory of Kansas: 

"An extraordinary occasion having oc- 
curred in the affairs of the territory, within 
the meaning of the Thirtieth Section of the 
organic act, which authorizes the legislature 
to be called together upon such occasions; 

"I, Fred P. Stanton, secretary and acting 
governor, do hereby summon the members 
of the council and house of representatives 
of the said territory to assemble in their re- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 149 

spective houses at Lecompton on Monday 
next, the 7th inst., then and there to con- 
sider matters of great moment pertaining 
to the public welfare. 

"Given under the seal of the territory, at 
Lecompton, this, the 1st day of December, 
A. D., 1857. (Fred P. Stanton.)" 

After Governor Walker had left, a com- 
mittee of pro-slavery men called on Gov- 
ernor Stanton and coolly told him that if he 
issued a proclamation convening the legis- 
lature he would not survive the act twenty- 
four hours. 

He replied: "Gentlemen, your threats 
are wasted on me. I shall do what I be- 
lieve to be my official duty without regard 
to personal consequences to myself." 

I had read an account of the matter in the 
journals, but years afterward the details 
were given me by Governor Stanton person- 
ally. He said: 

"My office was a cabin which stood some 
distance from any other house and it was 
my chamber as well as my office. In it I 
slept alone, and I slept as well as usual on 
the night after giving my proclamation to 
the press. I was not armed, my only avail- 
able weapon being a pocket knife. I had 
no fear of assassination, as that could do the 
pro-slavery cause no good and would have 
done it much harm. I expected the Presi- 
dent to remove me fro'm office, but that 



150 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

consideration had no weight with me in de- 
termining my action." 

Fred P. Stanton was born in Virginia in 
1 815, and educated in a select school in 
Alexandria, the principal of which was a 
noted Quaker school teacher, Benjamin 
Hallowell, whose memory was cherished by 
Governor Stanton with reverent affection 
and who is held in high esteem by all 
Quakers. Becoming a lawyer, Mr. Stanton 
located in Memphis, Tenn., in 1840. He 
very soon came to be recognized as a man 
of high character and an excellent lawyer. 
He was a man of fine personal appearance 
and an able and eloquent public speaker, 
Hon. Casey Young, when a member of 
Congress from the Memphis district, in 
1889, sa id to me: 

"When I was a boy I went with my 
father to hear Fred Stanton make a speech. 
He was then a member of Congress and a 
candidate for re-election. That speech and the 
personality of the speaker made a profound 
and abiding impression upon my mind. I 
thought him the grandest looking man I 
had ever seen and the greatest orator I 
had ever heard speak. I associated him in 
my mind with Cicero, Pericles and De- 
mosthenes, of whom I had read in the his- 
tories of Rome and Greece." 

Mr. Stanton represented the Memphis 
district in Congress from 1847 to l &57> 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 151 

when he was appointed to the office of Sec- 
retary of Kansas. His removal from that 
position ended his career as a public man. 
He located in the city of Washington some 
years later and opened a law office. He did 
not become a claim agent or a lobbyist, as 
many ex-members of the House and Senate 
have done and still continue to do, but he 
pursued the practice of his profession in a 
legitimate and honorable way, earning an 
honest living, but not wealth, as that word 
is understood in these modern times. His 
natural love of justice and his kindness of 
heart, stimulated by the teachings and ex- 
ample of his Quaker schoolmaster's influ- 
ence over him, combined to make him a 
philanthropist. He was opposed to mo- 
nopoly of privileges and all forms of oppres- 
sion and injustice, and he believed that na- 
tions should settle their disputes by arbitra- 
tion instead of by the sword. He was the 
founder and first president of the National 
Arbitration League of America, of which 
organization the writer of this sketch was 
for some years corresponding secretary. I 
had known and admired Governor Stanton 
before, but our work together in that effort 
to create and crystallize public sentiment in 
favor of the abolition of war by a civilized 
method brought us still closer together and 
cemented our friendship that never was nor 
ever can be severed. 



PETER COOPER. 

Peter Cooper was born in New York 
City in 1789. I met him for the first time 
in 1876. He was then a candidate for presi- 
dent of the United States on the National 
Greenback ticket. He had no expectation 
of being elected to that important office, but 
felt it to be his duty to stand as a represen- 
tative of the financial policy which he be- 
lieved to be best for the common people. 
I visited him in his home, a very unpreten- 
tious one, though he was a multi-millionaire. 
He impressed me as a man of superior men- 
tality, grand moral endowment and fine so- 
cial qualities. He greeted me most cor- 
dially, and during my visit of two hours he 
gave me quite an interesting history of his 
long, active and successful career. He said: 
"My object in life has been to be as useful 
as I could to my fellow men, and thus de- 
velop my own character. This I believe to 
be the only way to achieve the boon which 
we all seek, and that is happiness/' 

In reply to my question, "What are your 
religious views?" he said: "In a conversa- 
tion recently with Rev. Howard Crosby, I 

152 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 153 

said to him, 'If I were God I would give 
the poor fellows who have the hardest fate 
in this world a better chance in the next 
world than I would those who are rich and 
comfortable here. I judge God by myself, 
so I believe that He is not only just but 
merciful/ " 

He gave me a most interesting account 
of his conection with the birth of our rail- 
way system. He built in his shop in Balti- 
more the first American steam locomotive, 
and with it he pulled the first train of cars 
out of that city. A railway had been built 
in 1828 from Baltimore to Relay, nine miles 
out toward Washington. He showed me 
a picture of himself standing on his locomo- 
tive during that trial trip. 

Peter Cooper was a successful inventor 
and an enterprising manufacturer, hence it 
is easy to account for his great wealth. "It 
was not," he said, "my purpose to get rich, 
but as my inventions and enterprises proved 
successful and wealth began to pour in upon 
me, the idea that I might become the cus- 
todian of riches to be wisely used for the 
good of the improvident and unfortunate 
took possession of me. For forty years the 
chief desire of my heart was to build in my 
native city an institution where poor boys 
and girls could get a free education that 
would fit them for useful careers. The 
Cooper Institute is the realization of that 



154 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

desire. Some twenty-five thousand young 
men and women have already been educated 
there, and over six hundred thousand per- 
sons annually enjoy the benefits of the free 
library of the institute. I do not regard 
myself as owner in fee of the wealth which 
has come into my hands. I am simply the 
responsible administrator of an estate which 
belongs to humanity at large." 

After reading my life of General Benjamin 
F. Butler, whom he greatly admired, Mr. 
Cooper said to me: "I want you to be my 
biographer. Let us go to the institute and 
see Doctor Zacos, the curator, about it. He 
has the memoranda from which you could 
construct a biography of me." Doctor 
Zacos declined to surrender the memoranda 
saying that, "When the proper time comes I 
will write your life myself." Mr. Cooper 
was then ninety years of age, hence not so 
vigorous in mind or body as formerly, so 
he did not contend with his old servant. 
Doctor Zacos died without performing his 
proposed task, and so far as I know the life 
of Peter Cooper has not been written. This 
brief sketch is my humble and sincere tribute 
to his memory, 



WILLIAM BYRD POWELL. 

Dr. W. Byrd Powell was one of the brain- 
iest men it was ever my good fortune to 
know. He was professor of cerebral phys- 
iology in one of the medical colleges I at- 
tended when a student of the science and 
art of healing. I had read with deep in- 
terest and great profit his learned work on 
The Human Temperaments, and I was pre- 
pared to listen to his lectures with profound 
attention and sympathetic interest. I sought 
his personal acquaintance and we became 
warm friends, and until his demise in 1865 
I kept in touch with him. Doctor Powell 
was a master in his specialty, the anatomy 
and physiology of the brain and nervous 
system, and in the science of the tempera- 
ments, their differentiation, combinations, 
and their influence upon mental action and 
health. He was familiar with the works 
of Gaul, founder of the science of phrenol- 
ogy and of those great disciples of that 
pioneer in the field of mental science, 
Spurtzheim, Combe, Caldwell and others 
who had done so much toward perfecting 
that science, and in building upon it a sound 

155 



156 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

and safe philosophy of life and conduct; and 
he contributed much to the store of facts 
and to the elucidation of the philosophy 
evolved from those facts. He was a pioneer 
in a special department of science, which 
bears a most important relation to the hap- 
piness of men and women as husbands and 
wives. If his book on temperamental and 
phrenological adaptability could be read, 
and its principles accepted by all young men 
and women, before entering the important 
relation of marriage, harmony and happiness 
would be the rule, and divorce for incom- 
patibility the rare exception. I cannot in 
this brief sketch give Doctor Powell's 
science and philosophy of matrimony, but 
I cannot resist the impression that prompts 
me to present a very brief summary of it. 

Marriage has two fundamental objects — 
the propagation of the human species and 
the happiness of those united for the pur- 
pose of obeying the first great command- 
ment — to multiply and replenish the earth. 
Those only can properly obey that command 
who are temperamentally adapted to each 
other. In temperament the man and woman 
should be opposite, but in mental endow- 
ments they should be alike. The blondes 
should marry brunettes, the fat the lean, etc. 
But the man or woman who marries for 
temperamental or passional reasons solely, 
one of the opposite sex, whose intellectual, 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 157 

moral and social organs are not in harmony 
with their own, will, when the fires of pas- 
sion subside, find themselves very unhappy. 
Husbands and wives should be companions, 
comrades and co-workers. They should 
read with sympathetic interest the same 
books, think alike on all important subjects, 
enjoy the same sort of entertainments, have 
the same kind of friends, and find in each 
other's society a joy and happiness that 
increases year by year, even down to old 
age. They should be able to sing with the 
heart and with the understanding, "Jolm 
Anderson, My Joe John," and that more 
modern song, "When You and I Were 
Young, Maggie," with its beautiful refrain: 

"But now we are aged and gray, Maggie, 
And the journey of life nearly done, 

But to me you are as fair as you were, Mag- 
gie, 
When you and I were young." 

Doctor Powell made one of the most im- 
portant discoveries in connection with the 
brain ever given to the world. This is what 
is known as the Powell life line. The func- 
tions of the sub-brain, commonly called the 
vegetative brain, was not understood, even 
by the phrenologists, until Doctor Powell 
announced that it is the seat of the sub- 
conscious mind. That through it the sub- 
conscious mind sustains and regulates the 



158 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

vital organs of the body and that health and 
longevity depend in large measure upon the 
depth or thickness of that foundation upon 
which the mental brain rests, determines 
the amount of life force of a person, his 
ability to resist the encroachments of dis- 
ease and keep death at bay. The boundaries 
of the sub-brain are clearly determined by 
dissections, hence, its depth can be learned 
from a measurement given by Doctor Pow- 
ell. To the class he presented directions for 
this measurement in anatomical language: 
"Draw a line from the orbital prominence 
of the osfrontis to the spinal protuberance 
of the os-occipitus, then measure from the 
neatus auditorus externus up to that line." 
A free translation of this into English would 
read: Place one end of a line on the fore- 
head, immediately above the outer corner 
of the eye, and the other end on the bony 
protuberance at the back of the head, then 
measure from the opening of the ear up to 
that line. This measurement shows that 
in some persons the sub-brain is one inch 
deep, in others only half an inch, the aver- 
age being about three-fourths of an inch. 
Persons with only half an inch have very 
slight hold on life and rarely reach the age 
of thirty years. Those with three-fourths 
of an inch usually live to the age of three 
score years and ten, while one inch gives 
good promise of the person becoming a 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 150 

centenarian. The life line of palmistry cor- 
responds with this life line of Doctor Pow- 
ell. They are both valuable aids to the phy- 
sician in prognosing, that is, in forming^ an 
opinion as to whether a patient will die or 
recover. Powell's life line has been my 
guide in this matter during my whole career 
as a medical man. As an examiner for life 
insurance companies I have relied upon it 
more than any other sign or indication of 
longevity. On my recommendation the 
Home Life Insurance Company issued a 
policy to a man who had been three times 
reported against by medical examiners of 
high standing. That was in 1862 and in 
1884 I learned that he was still paying his 
premiums and with good prospect of con- 
tinuing to do so for many years longer. 

That one discovery should have given 
Doctor Powell worldwide and immortal 
fame, and that is but one of his discoveries 
that, although little known to the world 
now, are destined to be appreciated at their 
full value when the scientists who now oc- 
cupy the public stage and enjoy the lime- 
light of notoriety through discoveries that 
do not conflict with, but rather confirm the 
traditions of the past, have lived their brief 
time and dropped into the tomb of oblivion. 
It is not unlikely that the discoveries of my 
great master, Doctor Powell, will be pre- 
sented to the world by some future Paracel- 



160 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

sus or Lombroso, as original discoveries 
and accepted as such by the scientists and 
philosophers of that future time. In fact, 
some thirty years ago a mountebank phre- 
nologist claimed in a paper published in the 
Phrenological Journal, to be the discoverer 
of a scientific measurement that would show 
how long a person is likely to live. His 
discovery was along the lines of Doctor 
Powell's and I so stated in the following 
issue of the same journal and gave Doctor 
Powell's measurement in full. The bold 
pilferer of my revered master's discovery 
did not attempt to defend his stolen goods, 
but silently dropped out of the public eye 
before he had fairly gotten into it. 

Doctor Powell had the good fortune to 
live in advance of his age, to be a prophet 
of progress, hence, he could not be accepted 
as a leader by the conservative priests of 
science, who, like the priests of Judea, deem 
it their bounden duty to defend the temple 
from profanation, by keeping those cranks, 
the prophets, from entering its sacred por- 
tals. The prophet may die unhonored and 
his praises unsung, but his prophecy remains 
as a heritage to humanity. 



HIRAM W. THOMAS. 

Soon after my removal from Indianapolis 
to Chicago in 1872 a friend said to me, 
"You ought to hear Rev. Dr. Thomas 
preach. You would like him, I am sure." 
On the following Sunday I attended the 
services at his church, the First Methodist 
Episcopal, and listened to one of the most 
able, eloquent and truly Christian discourses 
which I had ever heard. I was not only de- 
lighted with the sermon, but charmed by 
the personality and manner of the preacher. 
His sincerity and earnestness were unmis- 
takable and his courage was sublime. 

Coming from the lips of a Methodist 
minister, some of his utterances were a sur- 
prise to me, but a pleasant surprise. My 
wife and myself became frequent attendants 
upon his ministrations, though we had pre- 
viously attended Rev. Robert Collyer's 
church and enjoyed his sermons very much. 
On forming a personal acquaintance with 
Doctor Thomas, our interest in him was 
much enhanced. We found in him a genial 
companion and warm friend. Some time 
later a card appeared in the daily journals 

161 



162 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

of the city inviting thoughtful and earnest 
men and women to a meeting in the lecture 
room of the First M. E. church for the 
purpose of considering the matter of form- 
ing a society for the discussion of important 
questions along scientific and philosophical 
lines. That card was signed H. W. Thomas. 
Some two hundred persons accepted that 
invitation. Doctor Thomas explained his 
purpose and after some discussion a com- 
mittee was chosen to report a plan of or- 
ganization one week from that evening. 
That committee was composed of Rev. 
H. W. Thomas, chairman; A. V. Keith, 
Esq., Prof. T. B. Taylor, Dr. T. A. Bland 
and Dr. H. N. Abbott. The committee re- 
ported a constitution and by-laws of the 
Philosophical Society of Chicago. The re- 
port was adopted and Professor Joseph E. 
Haven, D. D., L. L. D., elected president, 
with Rev. Robert Collyer, Mrs. Kate N. 
Doggett, Hon. Henry Booth, Miss Francis 
E. Willard, Prof. C. H. Fowler, D. D., Miss 
Jessie L. Bross, Hon. Julius Rosenthal, 
Prof. Thomas H. Safford, Rabbi Bernhard 
Felsenthall, Gen. Isaac N. Stiles, Prof. 
Richard Edwards and Prof. A. H. Worthen 
were chosen vice-presidents; Hon. J. M. 
Palmer, corresponding secretary; H. H. 
Anderson, recording secretary, and J. R. 
Floyd, treasurer. An executive commtitee 
of five were chosen, with Rev. H. W. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 163 

Thomas, D. D., chairman; Prof. David 
Swing, D. D., N. W. Abbott, M. D., Gen. 
M. B. Buford and T. A. Bland, M. D., as- 
sociates. 

The preamble to the constitution read as 
follows : 

"Being profoundly impressed with the 
unity of truth and its infinite value to man, 
and being equally impressed with the blind- 
ing effects upon the human mind of igno- 
rance, prejudice and superstition, it has 
seemed desirable to us to seek the organiza- 
tion of a society whose motto shall be, 
What Is Truth? Whose members, regard- 
less of past associations, preconceived opin- 
ions, or expressed convictions, shall, in a 
spirit of simplicity and candor, associate to- 
gether for the investigation of questions 
that are peculiar to our time, pertaining to 
human welfare and happiness." 

The executive committee held weekly 
meetings in Doctor Thomas' study, and 
thus I was brought into close touch with 
him, and a bond of sympathy, of ideas, and 
of personal regard, has held us together dur- 
ing the years that have since then passer! 
with their records into the realm of remi- 
niscence. For although in 1874 I removed 
to New York City and from there to the 
city of Washington later, and afterward to 
Boston, returning to Chicago in 1898, Doc- 
tor Thomas and myself exchanged letters 



164 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

from time to time and on rare occasions we 
met in my home or his and conferred to- 
gether on questions relating to the welfare of 
our fellowmen. In 1881 this great man and 
distinguished preacher was expelled from 
the church in which he had been raised and 
educated, and in which he was not only one 
of the most popular, but one of the most 
truly Christian ministers. In taking this 
action the M. E. Church suffered a loss, 
while Dr. Thomas was a great gainer. In 
his lecture on "Heretics and Heresies" Col- 
onel Ingersoll says to the church, referring 
to the case of Doctor Thomas and Professor 
Swing, "Go on with the work of expelling 
men from the pulpit for thinking. The 
world at large will welcome them to its 
broader platform." 

The expulsion of Doctor Thomas from 
the church on the unproven charge of 
heresy created a great sensation throughout 
the country. In Chicago the popular in- 
terest and excitement rose to fever heat. 
A public meeting was called, a committee 
appointed, a theater was hired and Doctor 
Thomas invited to preach to an independent 
congregation. So great was the desire to 
show this popular preacher what they 
thought of the verdict of the Rock River 
Conference that the people crowded the 
theater as soon as the doors were thrown 
open and the thousands unable to enter 




PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 165 

filled the streets for many blocks in each 
direction, on the Sunday morning when 
Doctor Thomas preached his first sermon 
to the People's Church in Hooley's Theater. 
From that day for twenty-two years he 
preached regularly to congregations com- 
posed of the best people of Chicago and 
much larger than he had ever preached to 
in the First Methodist Church. His au- 
diences were not confined to Chicago peo- 
ple, but every Sunday thoughtful people 
from every part of this great country, and 
often from across the ocean, listened with 
thrilling interest to his eloquent sermons. 
The People's Church, which for many years 
occupied McVicker's Theater, has been one 
of the famous institutions of this western 
metropolis, a Mecca where large-minded 
pilgrims found a holy shrine, at which they 
could worship without signing a dogmatic 
creed, or pronouncing a sectarian shibboleth. 
The Methodist Church has broadened 
greatly during the last quarter of a century. 
There were many of its ministers then who 
stood by Doctor Thomas in his trial, but 
they did not constitute a majority. That 
class are in control now, and if Doctor 
Thomas was put on trial in the Methodist 
Conference to-day, the plea which he pre- 
sented to the Rock River Conference that- 
expelled him would undoubtedly be ac- 
cepted. He said: 



166 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

"I do not ask the church to endorse my 
views, but to tolerate one in holding them. 
I want a liberal methodism for myself and 
my brethren, that can tolerate honest doubt 
rather than enforce dishonest faith." 

The conference said, "Come into con- 
formity or get out." Doctor Thomas re- 
plied, "Get more liberality and we can live 
together without conformity." The Inter- 
Ocean, a secular daily journal, said: 

"It was not Doctor Thomas that was on 
trial, but the Methodist Church, and it is 
the church, rather than Doctor Thomas, that 
stands convicted." 

With the added fame of his heresy trial 
and his succeeding triumph, Doctor Thomas 
was at once in demand by lecture bureaus 
and his popularity in that field has steadily 
grown. His lectures are really sermons and 
his sermons lectures. They are both highly 
entertaining as well as instructive. He has 
been for some years, and still is, president 
of the World's Liberal Congress of Relig- 
ions. The duties of this position and his 
advancing age induced him, three years ago 
to ask his church to elect another pastor. 
They did so, but retained Doctor Thomas 
as pastor emeritus. 

Dr. Thomas was born on a farm in Hamp- 
shire County, Virginia, April 29th, 1832. He 
worked with his father on the farm in sum- 
mer, and attended the country school in win- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 167 

ter, until he acquired a good primary educa- 
tion. He then walked eighty miles to an 
Academy, and worked his way through a 
two years' course. After two years' private 
instruction under Dr. McKesson at Berlin, 
Pennsylvania, he finished by taking a course 
in Greek and Philosophy under Dr. John 
F. Eberhart, now of Chicago. 

He began preaching at an early age, and 
for more than half a century he has been one 
of the most popular and progressive ministers 
of this country. His published sermons 
have been widely read and highly appreci- 
ated. 

Dr. Thomas was married in 1855 to Miss 
Emeline C. Merrick, a Pennsylvania girl, who 
was a faithful, loving and efficient helpmeet 
in all respects. She died in 1896. In 1899 
he married Miss Vandelia Varnum of New 
York, a woman of superior ability, and widely 
known in the lecture field. 



DAVID MacDONALD. 

When I was a country boy I sometimes 
visited the county seat during the sessions 
of the Circuit Court. David MacDonald 
presided over our court for many years. My 
father held the unfavorable opinion of law- 
yers, con^mon to those bred to the Quaker 
faith and to the business of a farmer, but he 
had a very high opinion of Judge MacDon- 
ald. I have heard him say more than once 
that, "If there are any honest lawyers, David 
MacDonald is one." 

When, in 1865, I established a journal in 
Indianapolis, I took an early opportunity to 
call upon that excellent and truly great man 
Judge MacDonald, whom President Lincoln 
had appointed to the high position of justice 
of the United States District Court for In- 
diana, which office he continued to occupy 
until his death, in 1870. 

On my telling him that I was a son of 
his old friend, Judge MacDonald greeted 
me in the warmest manner, and thereafter 
treated me more like a son than a friend. 
My memories of him are very pleasant. We 
often talked of old times in Indiana and ex- 
changed anecdotes of men prominent in her 
early history. He had been educated in the 
168 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 169 

state university at Bloomington and after- 
ward held for a while a professorship in his 
alma mater. Joseph A. Wright, twice 
governor of Indiana, and later United States 
senator, was educated, both in literature and 
law, in the same institution of learning. 
"Wright came to Bloomington," said Judge 
MacDonald, "to work his way through col- 
lege. He was an orphan boy without a dol- 
lar, but with a degree of courage seldom 
possessed by boys, and an ambition that 
spurred him on in the face of obstacles that 
would have appalled most boys. He earned 
a dollar and a half by three days' work as a 
well digger, and got another dollar and a 
half for three days' time spent in hunting a 
cow that had strayed into the wilderness. 
Those three dollars enabled him to matricu- 
late, and by doing chores and odd jobs he 
earned enough to pay his fees and board till 
his college course was finished." 

I once said to Judge MacDonald, "You 
doubtless knew James Whitcomb in the pio- 
neer days." 

"Oh, yes, I knew him well. He came 
from one of the eastern states when quite a 
young man, and opened a law office in 
Bloomington in the early years of the cen- 
tury. He was quite a polished and scholarly 
man. The first president of the State Uni- 
versity, Professor Hall, in a book entitled 
The New Purchase,' refers to him in his 



170 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

humorously sarcastic style as Sir William 
Cutswell, Esq. He was the first man 
ever known to wear a nightrobe in Indiana. 
On one occasion this habit got him into seri- 
ous trouble. At the county seat of an ad- 
joining county, where Whitcomb had gone 
to attend court, a waggish lawyer said to 
the proprietor of the tavern, where all the 
lawyers were stopping, 'That young fop, 
Jim Whitcomb, evidently thinks your beds 
are dirty, for he pulls off his shirt and puts 
on an old gown to sleep in/ 

" 'He does, does he? Well, I won't stand 
an insult like that/ 

"To assure himself that his informant was 
not lying, Bonny Face watched through a 
crack in the door of the Yankee lawyer's 
room, and thus caught him in the act of 
discarding his laundered shirt and donning a 
nightrobe. He lifted the latch and entered. 
With an expletive full of sulphurous wrath, 
he demanded of his lodger what he meant 
by insulting his house so outrageously. 

"'I beg your pardon, sir; I am not con- 
scious of offering any insult to your house.' 

"At this crisis two other lawyers, who 
were in the secret, rushed from their rooms 
and explained matters to the irate landlord, 
who, on learning that the joker had made a 
fool of him. poured out the vials of his wrath 
upon his head and drove him from his 
tavern. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 171 

"About 1835, Dr. Benedict, a disciple of 
Samuel Thomson in medicine and of Barton 
W. Stone in religion, came to Bloomington 
and held a protracted meeting, preaching 
daily and nightly with considerable elo- 
quence and great zeal, what was then known 
as New Light doctrine. Among his con- 
verts were James Whitcomb and myself. A 
church was organized and Whitcomb and I 
were elected elders. Whitcomb was an en- 
thusiastic violinist and a skillful performer 
on that instrument. He was grieved, there- 
fore, to learn that Dr. Benedict regarded the 
fiddle as a wicked instrument, and forbade 
any member of his church to play it. Being 
a bachelor, Whitcomb boarded with a Mrs. 
Wilson, also a member of the new church. 
One evening quite a number of the brethren, 
including myself, were in Brother Whit- 
comb's room, engaged in singing hymns and 
conversing upon religious topics. Whit- 
comb referred to Dr. Benedict's condemna- 
tion of the violin, and insisted that he was 
in error. 'Like everything else, the violin 
can be put to bad use, but if sanctified and 
used in the service of God, instead of the 
devil, there can* be no harm in playing it.* 

"We all agreed with him, and proposed 
that he play an accompaniment to a re- 
ligious song that we would sing. He con- 
sented. Sister Wilson was astonished to 
hear Brother Whitco/mb's fiddle going. She 



172 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

came to the door and reprimanded him for 
returning to his old ways of wickedness. 
The offending elder defended himself most 
skillfully, and so successfully that Sister 
Wilson joined in singing that good old 
hymn, When I Can Read My Title Clear,' 
to Whitcomb's accompaniment on the vio- 
lin. While thus piously engaged, Dr. Bene- 
dict came up the stairs. He paused at the 
door, and for a moment stood as though 
transfixed with horror at the evidence of de- 
pravity before him. Whitcomb's arguments 
failed to convince the good doctor, who 
said, 'Elder Whitcomb, you must go before 
the congregation of the disciples, and make 
public confession of your sin and promise 
not to repeat your offense.' Whitcomb de- 
clined to do this and was disowned by the 
church. He afterward became a disciple of 
Thomas Paine." 

On one occasion I told Judge MacDonald 
an anecdote of Paris C. Dunning, at that 
time lieutenant-governor of Indiana, and he 
said: "I must tell you a characteristic story 
of Paris. I was visiting Bloomington some 
years ago as the guest of an old friend, on 
the Fourth of July. Dunning was to be the 
orator of the day, and my friend and I went 
to hear his oration. As we were on our way 
back to his residence he asked me how I 
liked Dunning's speech. I replied that I did 
not think much of it, in fact, I was rather 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 173 

ashamed of it when I delivered it myself 
on the same spot twenty years before." 

Governor Wright's name came up one day 
and the judge said : "Governor Wright was, 
as you know, a devoted Methodist, and this 
was one of the elements of his political 
strength. During his canvass for re-election 
as governor, Joe, as he was familiarly called, 
made a speech at Centerville, and, being 
told that a few miles from there lived 
a large family by the name of Jones, all 
Methodists, but all Whigs, he made inquiry 
and learned that one Squire Jones was a 
very influential man in his neighborhood and 
a leader among his relatives. Joe mounted 
his horse, at the close of his speech at Cen- 
terville, and proceeded to the country home 
of Squire Jones. He introduced himself and 
was very cordially invited to stay over night. 
The governor talked religion like a circuit 
rider, but not a word did he utter about 
politics. When the hour for retiring arrived 
the governor, on invitation of his host, led 
the family in their evening devotions. He 
did the same thing the next morning. When 
he was about to take his departure he opened 
his saddle bags and took from one of the 
capacious pockets a copy of the Methodist 
Discipline and a Methodist hymn book. 
Holding them up he said, 'These are the 
documents I carry on my campaign.' 
"As he rode away, Sister Jones said to 



174 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

her husband, 'That's a dear good man, and, 
Whig though you be, you must vote for 
him.' 

"The governor got nearly every vote in 
that neighborhood that year." 

Joseph A. Wright was a Democrat of the 
Jefferson and Jackson type, hence when the 
South rebelled he was earnestly and actively 
loyal to the Union, though then quite aged 
and feeble. 

It was through his efforts, while governor, 
that the Indiana State Board of Agriculture 
was organized, and he became quite famous 
as an advocate of high farming. My father 
esteemed Governor Wright very highly and 
always voted for him when he was a candi- 
date for office. In his early career he was 
associated, in the law, with Gen. Tilman A. 
Howard, one of Indiana's best and ablest 
men of the early days. General Howard 
died in Texas in 1845, while representing 
the United States as minister plenipotentiary 
to that republic, just before her annexation 
to the United States. 

The tejnptation is strong to record here 
anecdotes and reminiscences of quite a num- 
ber of other contemporaries of my friend 
Judge MacDonald. I should like to write at 
length of Gen. Jacob B. Low, one of the 
pioneers of Indiana, a fine lawyer and a 
great-souled man ; Col. ' Willis A. Gorman, 
a veteran of the Mexican War, and later 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 175 

the territorial governor of Minnesota ; Judge 
Samuel R. Cavins, a man of unsullied fame 
and of such qualities of head and heart that 
when he would allow himself to be a candi- 
date for office it were useless for any man 
to enter the race against him. 

Judge MacDonald withdrew from the New 
Light Church after a few years of member- 
ship in it, and became, in religious belief, a 
Unitarian. But the cold intellectuality of 
the Unitarians, as a religious body, did not 
satisfy the deep emotions of his soul, and a 
few years before his death he became a mem- 
ber of one of the Methodist churches of 
Indianapolis. With his characteristic hon- 
esty and sincerity, he told the officers of the 
church that he desired a religious home 
where he could worship God according to 
the dictates of his own conscience, without 
being required to profess a belief in doc- 
trines which he could not accept as true, and 
he was received on that statement. He was 
a profound student of the Harmonial 
Philosophy and a firm believer in the con- 
tinuity of life and the ministration of angels. 
After he became United States district judge 
the railroad officers of the state tendered 
him complimentary passes over their re- 
spective lines of travel. Those he invariably 
returned, with thanks for the courtesy, which 
as a public judicial officer he could not ac- 
cept. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most emi- 
nent American philosopher, and one who 
has by his essays and lectures shed a bril- 
liant luster upon this country. 

To say that he has founded a school of 
philosophy would be to do him an injustice 
and incur his disapprobation. This has not 
been his aim. He was wise enough to know 
that the great principles of philosophy were 
all known to the ancients; to Socrates and 
Plato more fully than to others, but the 
chief axioms have been the common prop- 
erty of the world's thinkers for thousands of 
years. 

No ; he could only restate the great truths 
that are the common property of all; pre- 
sent them in new -costumes, or at best, cor- 
relate them into higher and more useful 
forms, and leave them to the mental diges- 
tion of whoever might follow him. I find 
the strongest proof that Emerson is a phi- 
losopher, in his repudiation of discipleship, 
in his distinct avowal that he has no wish 
to found a school of philosophy or be a 
leader of men. 

176 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 177 

He would have a profound contempt for 
one who should say that he accepted Emer- 
son's writings as his creed. 

He has given the world the best thought 
he had, in the best dress he knew how to 
construct, with the hope that his effort may 
inspire others to think. 

If any can excel him he would rejoice in 
their triumph; if others can comprehend his 
entire thought and thus make it their own, 
he is glad, and if some can only get a part 
of his thought, he wants them to chew it 
well and digest it thoroughly, instead of 
bolting it whole and then going to sleep on 
it. 

He has no respect for opinions made to 
order. Every man should do his own think- 
ing. If he is even not able to think very 
profoundly, yet he is richer with his own 
ideas, obtained by his own mental effort, 
be they ever so simple, than with those of an- 
other that he accepts without understand- 
ing, and weighing and testing by criticism. 

"Books," says Emerson, "should be sug- 
gestive rather than instructive. They should 
set the reader to thinking, instead of giving 
him the full-orbed thought of another." 

Thought, to be of much value, must be 
achieved by the individual possessing it. In- 
herited mental wealth, like entailed real 
estate, is apt to prove a curse rather than 



178 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

a blessing. Prove all things by your own 
rules. Take nothing for granted. 

Mr. Emerson is an excellent illustration 
of his own doctrines. He is eminently origi- 
nal. True, he has accepted all, or nearly all 
of the fundamental principles taught by the 
old philosophers, but he accepted only after 
proving them, and as he adopted them, one 
by one, he dressed them in suits of Emer- 
sonian cut and sent them out to be criticized. 
Nor are they cumbered with clothes. Emer- 
son despises verbosity. He uses words as 
vehicles for conveying ideas about, and he 
is always careful not to send his thoughts 
out in vehicles of such elaborate construc- 
tion that the people shall be in danger of 
losing the idea in their admiration for the 
rhetoric. 

He condenses to the verge of abruptness, 
yet his style is elegant, showing culture and 
refinement. He never descends to slang, 
wit, sarcasm, or any sort of vulgarism. He 
is a gentleman, a thinker, a scholar. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a native of Bos- 
ton. He was born in the year 1803. 

He graduated in Harvard University in 
1 82 1, at the age of eighteen. It is said of 
him that while he did not excel in the 
special studies of the college course, he was, 
by odds, the best general scholar in his 
class. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 179 

Philosophy, history and biblistics were his 
special favorites. 

He was meant for the church, and in 1829 
he was ordained at the Second Unitarian 
Church of Boston and entered upon the du- 
ties of assistant pastor, under the Rev. 
Henry Ware. His ministerial career was 
short, however. He very soon found him- 
self differing with his church on matters of 
faith, and besides, he could not submit to 
the ritualism and ceremonials of the service 
as then conducted, and in 1832 he resigned 
his charge and sailed for Europe. 

On his return to the United States in 
1833, he entered upon his career as lecturer, 
a profession which he has adorned and en- 
nobled, but which has not made him 
wealthy. His subjects were culture, nature, 
compensation, etc., etc. 

The thinkers went to hear him, but as 
they were vastly in the minority, his halls 
were not often crowded. Ruskin said to a 
committee in Manchester who asked him to 
lecture recently : "If I had any assurance that 
your people desired instruction in some de- 
partment to which I have given special 
thought, I would not hesitate to accept your 
offer. But I have no time to merely enter- 
tain a vulgar mob, nor *can I afford to act 
the buffoon for the gratification of children, 
and this, my observation teaches me, is de- 
manded of the modern lecturer/' One of 



180 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

the most popular of American lecturers said 
to the writer some years ago : "I am sick of 
lecturing. I am disgusted with making a 
clown of myself from night to night for the 
gratification of gaping rustics and brainless 
snobs. Why, there is more thought in one 
of Emerson's lectures than in twenty of 
mine; yet while he lectures to empty seats, 
I perform before immense crowds." 

I was glad to learn that this man had the 
sense to place a proper estimate upon Emer- 
son's ability, if he did not have the nobility 
to stand on his plane and invite the people 
up higher. 

Emerson's first book was a volume of Es- 
says, published in 1841. This met with fa- 
vor from the press and the more intelligent 
classes; but to this day the great mass of 
people know nothing of it. He was at this 
time editor of the Dial, to which he had 
been a contributor from the start 

In 1844 the second volume of his Essays 
was issued, and this work met with more 
favor than the first. He now began to be 
widely known, both in this country and 
Europe. 

Mr. Emerson is something of a poet, at 
least he thinks he is, and in this opinion he 
is corroborated by quite a number of critics; 
but I confess I cannot appreciate his style 
of poetry. I like his thought better in un- 
dress than when clothed in the robes of 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS, 181 

poesy. A volume of his poems made its 
appearance in 1846. 

"His Representative Men," an ideal work, 
was issued in 1850. The design of this 
work is most admirable, and the working 
up is fully equal to the conception. It com- 
prises a series of mental portraits of ideal 
characters. Plato, painted as Emerson 
would have him appear, stands for the 
Philosopher; Swedenborg for the Mystic; 
Shakespeare for the Poet, etc. 

Mr. Emerson's chief mission and aim has 
been to aid in emancipating the minds of 
the people from the slavery of creed and 
school, and to inspire them with a spirit 
of true manhood. He would see independ- 
ence of thought and freedom of belief take 
the place of discipleship and creed worship. 
It is gratifying to the writer and will, no 
doubt, be to the reader, to note the fact that 
Mr. Emerson's books and lectures have 
proven sufficiently popular to yield him an 
income sufficient for all the needs of a phi- 
losopher. 

This sketch of the Concord philosopher 
was written by the author of this book thirty 
years ago for a popular journal of that day. 
A short time after that I made the 
personal acquaintance of that truly great 
man. I found him genial, companion- 
able and modest; a good listener as well as 



182 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

a good talker. He liked to listen to those 
who had something to say and knew how to 
say it in as few words as practicable. It is 
related of him that on one occasion a man 
called to see him with a letter of introduc- 
tion. Mr. Emerson received him with his 
usual cordiality and introduced some topic 
of general interest at the time, expressing 
briefly his own views. 

"I quite agree with you, Mr. Emerson." 

"That being the case, there is nothing to 
be gained by discussing that subject." 

Mr. Emerson introduced one subject after 
another for perhaps ten minutes, with the 
same barren result, the visitor agreeing with 
him on every point. The monotony worried 
the host and he said to the visitor: 

"My dear sir, please say no just once so 
that there will be two of us." 

Emerson's genuine democracy is well ex- 
emplified in an anecdote told me by a friend 
who vouched for its truthfulness. 

A gentleman from a small town in west- 
ern New York called upon the philosopher 
with a letter of introduction. 

On reading that letter Mr. Emerson said: 

"I have a highly prized correspondent in 
your town, a profound philosopher." 

"I do not not know to whom you can re- 
fer. I was not aware that we had a philoso- 
pher in our midst. What is his name?" 

"Henry Smith." 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS, 183 

"You must be in error. I know every- 
body in our village and vicinity, and there 
is certainly no philosopher among our peo- 
ple. There is a man there by the name of 
Smith, but he is an old cobbler." 

"That is the man I refer to. I am sur- 
prised that you, his fellow townsman, should 
not know as I do, that Henry Smith, who 
probably has repaired your boots on occa- 
sion, is a deep thinker, in fact, a modern 
Socrates." 

Mr. Emerson encouraged other thinkers, 
and thus quite a coterie of them clustered 
about him. Mr. A. Bronson Alcott was a 
favored protege of Emerson, and his patro- 
nage was of great advantage to Mr. Alcott, 
an excellently good man and a fine scholar, 
as the phrase goes, but not a very great 
thinker. 

Kindness of heart was one of Mr. Emer- 
son's great virtues, hence he was always 
ready to aid the weaker ones in their quest 
for knowledge, or in their efforts to gain 
a hearing from the public. 



JULIA WARD HOWE. 

Some thirty-five years ago, while on a 
visit to New York, I had the pleasure of 
listening to an address on Woman, by Julia 
Ward Howe. I was glad of the opportunity 
to hear a woman whose reputation in liter- 
ary and art circles, as well as in the ranks 
of the progressives, is so enviable. I lis- 
tened to her as a critic. I was more intent 
upon an analysis of her style than an effort to 
extract pleasure from her finished and 
chanming address. 

I decided that she was one of the great 
prophets of the time, occupying one of the 
loftiest heights of Nebo. She is artist, poet, 
reformer, but above all, an idealist. She 
is both an iconoclast and an architect. But 
her field of labor is in the realm of ideas. 
One of her biographers says she is not an 
artist. I differ from him. I am sure that 
although her creations are less tangible to 
the physical senses than the statues of a 
Hosmer or a Powers, or the paintings of 
Lessing or Church, they are not less real 
and beautiful. Indeed, they excel them as 
184 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 185 

much as mind excels matter. About her 
claims to the title of poet there is no dis- 
pute. Nor do any deny that she is a true 
reformer, a lover of humanity, a prophet of 
the better time coming. This eminent wo- 
man was born and bred in the city of New 
York. Her father was a wealthy banker, 
hence, her social position was what people 
style the highest. It is greatly to her credit 
that she did not, as most wealthy men's 
daughters do, give her chief attention to 
dress and to the external amenities and ac- 
complishments of fashionable society. Her 
taste for study was displayed quite early, 
and her father, with that rare good sense 
so often wanting in rich men, encouraged 
her in it. Through the aid of a fine library 
and the best teachers she became an edu- 
cated girl. She was not merely "finished," 
but educated. She knew something, and 
her mind was so trained to habits of thought 
that to become wiser every day, as long as 
she lived, would be simply natural. She 
studied German with the ulterior view to 
becoming an heir to the rich inheritance be- 
queathed to the world by the poets and 
philosophers of that nation. She sat at the 
feet of Goethe and Schiller when a child, but 
later in life the subtleties of Swedenborg 
claimed her attention and deeply impressed 
her mind. 



186 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Guizot's History of Civilization, which 
she read when about twenty years of age, 
made an excellent impression upon her 
mind. Its commonsense practicabilities and 
rather prosy facts and deductions, had a 
wonderfully modifying influence upon the 
temper and direction of her thoughts. When 
about twenty-three she was married to that 
eminent political and humanitarian re- 
former, Samuel G. Howe. On going abroad 
with her husband, whose fame was greater 
in Europe than it was in America, Julia had 
her ambition stimulated by the obvious fact 
that she had no importance, save that bor- 
rowed from the great man that she had 
married. She was by no means content 
with this, and she resolved to acquire an 
importance of her own. She resolved to dip 
still deeper into the mines of thought, and 
when her mind should be sufficiently stored 
to justify the attempt, she would enter the 
arena of authorship. 

Her first book was a collection of poems 
entitled, "Passion Flowers/' published in 
1854. Her next book, "A Word for the 
Hour," was published in 1856. Doctor 
Howe was at this period editor of the Bos- 
ton Commonwealth and Julia contributed 
largely to his paper. She wrote a play, 
which was brought out at once, but did not 
succeed very well. It had merit as a drajna 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 187 

of thought and feeling, but lacked adapted- 
ness to stage properties. 

In 1859 Doctor Howe and his wife visited 
Florida, having in charge that distinguished 
preacher, Theodore Parker, then dying of 
consumption, but refusing to die because he 
felt that his work was not finished. On her 
return from that visit, Mrs. Howe gave us 
a most readable book of travel. 

She has written voluminously for the 
New York Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, 
and other leading periodicals, and she has 
delivered also a number of most able and 
classical lectures on Ethics, Art, Man, etc. 
In 1866 she published a book of poems, 
"Later Lyrics. They pertained, in large 
measure, to the Civil War just closed, and 
were mostly written during the war. Some 
of them had been set to music and sung all 
over the land by the soldiers of the Union. 
Her Battle Hymn of the Republic would, 
alone, have made her famous. "From the 
Oak to the Olive" is the title of a book of 
travels in Europe, which is full of interesting 
sketches, beautiful pen pictures and thought- 
ful deductions. Mrs. Howe has been one 
of the warmest friends of her own sex and 
an earnest and able advocate of woman's 
right to the broadest and best culture, the 
fullest and freest opportunities, and the 
highest and noblest privileges. 



188 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

As a writer, she is chaste, elegant and 
impassioned. As a speaker, eloquent, artis- 
tic and poetic. Her rhetoric is perfect, her 
logic sound and her elocution almost fault- 
less. Her voice is exceedingly rich and 
musical and she has perfect control of it, 
while her gestures are those of the true oia- 
ton 



ALFRED B. MEACHAM. 

Alfred JBenjamin Meacham was born in 
Orange County, Indiana, in 1826, and edu- 
cated in the pioneer schools of that time. 
When yet a boy, his parents removed to 
Iowa, and in 1850 he and his brother Har- 
vey crossed the plains to California as gold- 
seekers. In 1 85 1 they visited San Fran- 
cisco for the first time. The public houses 
were all saloons and gambling dens. The 
Meachams did not drink or gamble. This 
fact made them conspicuous. The rough 
men with whom they were obliged to asso- 
ciate resolved that they should drink with 
them. The leader invited them to drink, 
and, upon their declining, he said: 

"You have got to drink or fight." 

Alfred replied, "If you will first let me 
tell you a story I will then drink with you, 
if you ask me to do so." 

"All right," replied the bully. Mounting 
to the top of a whisky barrel, the young 
man told, in eloquent and pathetic language, 
the story of how, when she was dying, his 
good, pious mother had called him to her 
bedside and begged him to promise her 
189 



190 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

never to drink liquor or gamble; that on his 
bended knees, with his dear mother's hand 
on his head, he had made that promise. 
The rough miners and others who made up 
his audience were deeply affected, and tears 
coursed down cheeks unaccustomed to ten- 
der emotions, and when the speaker closed 
by asking, "Would you have me break that 
promise ?" "No, no, no," came up as a re- 
sponse. That was his first temperance 
speech, but Alfred B. Meacham became, 
years afterwards, a famous temperance 
orator. 

Returning to Iowa after a few years, those 
brothers married the girls they had left 
behind them, and again went West, settling 
in Oregon, where they built a home to- 
gether, in which they lived till 1870, in 
which year Harvey was killed by a falling 
tree. 

In the meantime, Alfred had become fa- 
mous, not only as a temperance orator, but 
as a political speaker, and at the bar, for he 
had become a lawyer. As a lawyer, he in- 
variably declined to prosecute in criminal 
cases, but was often successful in defending 
men unjustly charged with crime. One of 
the most noted cases of this kind was when 
he defended a stranger who was being tried 
in Judge Lynch's court on a charge of horse- 
stealing. There was no positive proof of 
his guilt, but strong circumstantial evidence. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 191 

Meacham urged that the committee of vigi- 
lants turn the prisoner over to the proper 
officers of the law, but the majority opposed 
this, and the man was about to be hung. 
Drawing a revolver, Meacham placed him- 
self beside the prisoner, saying, as he did 
so, "I will defend this man's right to a legal 
trial with my life." That argument pre- 
vailed, and within a few hours a witness ar- 
rived on the scene whose testimony vindi- 
cated the accused man, who proved to be 
an honest man and a preacher of the Gospel. 
His gratitude to his heroic defender was 
unbounded. 

In 1868, and also in 1872, Mr. Meacham 
was a state elector on the Republican ticket, 
and in 1872-73 he was a member of the 
Electoral College, from Oregon, and cast 
the vote of that state for President Grant. 
He had been Superintendent of Indian af- 
fairs for Oregon during Grant's first admin- 
istration, and by his firm but just treatment 
of the Indians he had won their confidence 
and friendship. The President knew this, so 
he asked him to head a commission to treat 
with the Modoc Indians, then on the war- 
path. On reaching the border of the lava 
beds, in which Captain Jack, the Modoc 
chief, and his people were intrenched, 
Meacham opened his sealed instructions, to 
find that General Canby was ex-officio mem- 
ber of the commission, and that he could 



192 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

make no treaty, nor any move in that direc- 
tion, without the advice and consent of the 
general, then in command of the army of 
the Pacific Coast. A truce was entered into 
between the commission and the Modocs, 
each agreeing to refrain from any act of 
war while negotiations for peace were pend- 
ing. The Modocs, thinking it safe to do so, 
sent their ponies out to graze in charge of 
the women and boys of the tribe. A com- 
pany of soldiers, under the command of 
Major Biddle, frightened the women and 
boys away and drove the ponies into Canby's 
camp. Captain Jack sent a delegation of 
squaws, headed by his sister, to ask General 
Canby to return his ponies. Canby refused, 
saying that the ponies would be returned 
when the war was over, but not before. 
Chairman Meacham went alone, on Captain 
Jack's invitation, to meet the chief midway 
between the two hostile camps. The chief 
opened the conference by. saying: 

"The government has broken this new 
law (the truce) and no treaty can be made 
until it is mended. Send back my stolen 
ponies, then we can talk about peace." A 
few days later the Modocs asked for a coun- 
cil at the same spot where Meacham had 
met Jack, between the commission and the 
Indians. General Canby urged acceptance, 
but Winema, cousin to Captain Jack, and 
wife of Frank Riddle, interpreter for the 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 193 

commission, visited the Modoc camp, and 
on her return told Meacham not to go, as 
the chief would demand the return of the 
ponies, and if this was refused the com- 
mission would be killed. Canby refused to 
credit this, and insisted upon the meeting. 
It was held, with the result that on General 
Canby's saying to Captain Jack that his 
ponies would not be returned until peace 
was made, the chief drew a revolver from 
his bosom and shot the general in the face. 
Boston Charley then shot Rev. Dr. Thomas, 
a member of the commission, and Chief 
Schonshin, after some hesitation, pointed a 
rifle at Meacham and fired, but Winema 
pushed his gun aside and the ball went 
wide of its mark. Schonshin then drew his 
revolver and charged upon Meacham, but 
Winema threw herself between him and his 
intended victim, and the chief, not wishing 
to kill her, failed to kill Meacham. Other 
Indians joined Schonshin, and over twenty 
shots were fired at Meacham, as he re- 
treated backward, with Winema fighting his 
assailants off. Seven shots hit him and he 
went down from the stunning effects of one 
of them and from loss of blood. Boston 
Charley now attempted to scalp him, but 
before he had finished that savage act Wi- 
nema frightened him off by crying aloud, 
"The soldiers are coming!" The Indians 
now ran for their stronghold, and after 



194 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

about an hour a party of soldiers and a sur- 
geon came to the scene, to find Canby and 
Thomas dead and Meacham apparently 
dead, while Winema was kneeling by his 
side, wiping the blood from his face and 
trying to stop its flow. Commissioner 
Meacham survived to tell the Indian side of 
that terrible tragedy from more than a thou- 
sand platforms and to write two books — 
"Wigwam and Warpath" and "Winema and 
Her People." 

That famous hero of peace and friend of 
justice came to our home in New York, in 
1875, as a despairing invalid. My wife and 
I, both physicians, treated him, nursed him, 
and when he was able to work we managed 
his lectures and cared for his health and 
comfort. He passed to his reward from 
our home in Washington, D. C, February 
16, 1882, dying from the effects of privation 
and exciting perils he had passed through 
as United States Commissioner to the Ute 
Indians in Colorado during 1880 and 1881. 
He had started, in 1877, "The Council 
Fire," a journal devoted to a sound Indian 
policy. Before he died he made us promise 
to continue that paper, and for ten years 
afterward we did so. It was discontinued 
only when the government policy toward 
the Indians became so fixed, by act of Con- 
gress, that it was useless to longer plead for 
justice for that oppressed and fast-disappear- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 195 

ing race, which occupied this continent be- 
fore the days of Columbus, and welcomed 
the first invaders with open hands, offering 
to share their country with them. 

Colonel Meacham's death caused wide 
mourning among the Indian tribes every- 
where, and high tributes were paid his mem- 
ory by public men and the press. The 
Washington Post said, in part: "Colonel 
Meacham was in some respects a great man. 
He possessed talent of a high order, courage 
that never quailed and enthusiasm that 
prompted to deeds of heroism in behalf of 
any cause he espoused. He was a large- 
hearted, generous and thoroughly honest 
man, but his fame rests chiefly upon his ef- 
forts by pen and tongue to educate the 
American people to the point of dealing 
justly and humanely by the Indians of this 
country." 

This friend of justice died poor, as the 
world counts wealth. Immediately after his 
death I prepared a bill and got it intro- 
duced into both houses of Congress, putting 
his widow on the pension roll at $600 a year. 
That bill passed without opposition, and at 
once. I afterwards secured the passage of a 
bill giving Winema a pension of $300 a 
year, which she still enjoys. In 1882 the 
author of this sketch wrote a life of his friend 
Meacham, which is now out of print. A 
great many Indians, especially among the 



196 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

civilized tribes, bought that book and prized 
it very highly. 

Hon. George W. Manypenny, Commis- 
sioner of Indian Affairs under the adminis- 
tration of President Pierce, and at the time 
of Colonel Meacham's death chairman of 
the Ute Commission, paid this beautiful 
tribute to his dead colleague: 

"The death of my friend and colleague has 
filled my heart with profound sorrow. On 
the day before he died he authorized me to 
say to the Secretary of the Interior that he 
would leave here, if it was desirable that he 
should, in time to reach the Uintah Reserva- 
tion by the 15th of March, to resume his 
duties as a commissioner. Before the mes- 
sage was delivered my colleague was dead." 

"I first met Colonel Meacham in a lecture 
hall in Columbus, O. I went there not only 
to hear a lecture on the Indian question, but 
to see the man wdio fell by the bullets of 
the Modocs, with Canby and Thomas, and 
who, though supposed to be killed, was 
providentially, and through the aid of an 
Indian woman, brought back to life. He 
was still an invalid, made so by the wounds 
inflicted by the Modocs, yet he was there to 
plead the cause of the race to whom those 
who injured him belonged. He handled his 
subject in an able and earnest manner. Hav- 
ing read the story of the tragedy and known 
that for several years thereafter Colonel 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 197 

Meacham was a helpless invalid, and was at 
that time not free from pain, his appearance 
on the platform as the champion of the In- 
dian, pleading for justice in behalf of the 
race, was a spectacle as rare as it was beau- 
tiful, and presented a phase of character 
that commanded my highest admiration." 

This is an extract from a speech delivered 
by Colonel Manypenny at a memorial meet- 
ing held by the friends of Colonel Meacham 
on the evening of February 20. 

Rev. Alexander Kent said, in part: "It 
is rare to find a man who loses sight of him- 
self in his love for his work, and who is 
willing to be lost sight of by others, if only 
the cause he serves may be pushed to the 
front. Colonel Meacham seemed to me such 
a man. No personal pique, I think, could 
have dulled his interest. Certainly no in- 
gratitude or injuries could make him a foe. 
His services to the Indians after the ex- 
perience of the lava beds placed him in the 
front rank of the Christian army and showed 
him to be endowed with the very spirit of 
his Captain." 

I should like to quote many other tributes 
to the memory of my friend, but want of 
space forbids. 



ALVA CURTIS. 

Dr. Alva Curtis was born in Massachusetts 
in 1798. He was educated in the common 
schools and also took a regular college 
course in literature and medicine, receiving 
the degree of Master of Arts, also Doctor 
of Medicine. He achieved a high position 
in the ranks of the regular Allopathic school, 
and had a large practice while yet quite 
young. He was not satisfied with the re- 
suits of his prescriptions, however, so he 
looked into the merits of the new botanic 
system of medicine, with the result that he 
became one of the most noted medical re- 
reformers of his time. He reduced the 
crude therapeutic theory of Samuel Thomp- 
son to a science and christened it physio- 
medical. He held that medicine should be 
based on physiology instead of pathology. 
He defined health to be a state of the body 
when all the organs performed their respec- 
tive functions naturally and harmoniously. 
Disease, he said, is a state in which the or- 
gans of the body perform their functions un- 
der abnormal conditions, and with greater or 
less difficulty. He accepted the theory of 
198 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 199 

his eminent predecessor, Dr. John Brown, 
of Scotland, author of the classic sentence, 
"Vis Medicatriw Natura" (healing power of 
nature) ; that nature is the true physician 
and the doctor of medicine, if true to his 
calling, is simply her assistant, whose sole 
duty is to find out what she is trying to do 
and aid her in her efforts to restore the pa- 
tient to a state of health. Water in various 
forms and temperatures and sanative or non- 
poisonous vegetable . medicines made up his 
list of remedies. Poisons, he said, do not 
cure disease, but, instead, they prevent a 
cure. They destroy or hinder the action of 
the vital force which is always trying to 
maintain health or restore it. He held, with 
Doctor Brown and his most famous Ameri- 
can disciple, Dr. Benjamin Rush, that dis- 
ease is a unit. That it is produced by var- 
ious causes and manifested by a variety of 
symptoms, and that one of the great errors 
of the physicians is in calling symptoms dis- 
eases and treating symptoms, instead of 
causes. For example, fever and inflamma- 
tion are not dieases, but manifestations or 
symptoms of disease. They are nature's 
methods of removing obstructions to har- 
monious vital action. Remove the cause of 
the fever or inflammation and it will disap- 
pear, and the vital force resume its normal 
action. To reduce the fever by bleeding 
and purging is, according to this theory, to 



200 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

be an ally of disease instead of an assistant 
to nature. Pain, says Doctor Curtis, is the 
voice of nature calling attention to diseased 
conditions. If, said Dio Lewis, in one of 
his lectures, a doctor is called to a patient 
suffering from pain and he stops the pain 
with morphine and then claims to have 
cured the patient, he would be on a par with 
a policeman who would knock a man sense- 
less for crying fire and then claim to have 
put out the fire. 

Doctor Curtis founded a medical college 
in Cincinnati, about the middle of the last 
century, where his doctrine was taught. 
The writer of this book took a course in 
that institution when he was a student of 
medicine, hence, he became acquainted with 
its founder and also with that great philoso- 
pher and distinguished scientist, Dr. Daniel 
Vaughn, who was professor of chemistry 
in that college, and also in the Ohio Medical 
College, founded by Dr. Daniel Drake, one 
of the greatest physicians and surgeons of 
this country. Doctor Curtis was a delight- 
ful man socially, but he was so intense in 
his beliefs that he became a famous contro- 
versalist, which fact cut him off from the 
society of those who differed from him radi- 
cally. His influence upon the world would 
have been greater had he been content to 
teach his system and refrain from severe 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 201 

criticisms upon others. I formed a strong 
friendship with him, which was never 
broken. We corresponded occasionally up 
to within a year of his death, in 1882. He 
died a poor man. Being a reformer and a 
philanthropist, that fact is not surprising. 
Calling his system of medicine physiomedi- 
cal, Doctor Curtis taught that it was the 
duty of physicians to study the laws of life 
as related to diet, exercise, etc., and to ad- 
vise their patients on those subjects, as well 
as to prescribe medicines for them. He 
was, himself, a devout worshiper at the 
shrine of Hygea, and his strict observance 
of her laws enabled him to reach a ripe age, 
though his body was frail and his brain so 
active that he constantly taxed his powers 
to the limit of endurance. He was a good 
illustration of his own teachings. He was 
a doctor in the true sense, a teacher as well 
as a physician. 

In religion, Doctor Curtis was something 
of a heretic, being naturally inclined to 
progress, through questioning the grounds 
of the old faith and investigating the claims 
of the new. He was one of the first men 
of prominence to investigate the wonderful 
phenomena which startled the world in 
1848, and which at first was known as the 
Rochester knockings, but now bears the 
more respectable title of psychic phenomena. 



202 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

As early as 1850 Doctor Curtis entered upon 
the earnest study of the manifestations which 
claimed to be produced by visitors from the 
spirit realm, with the purpose of establish- 
ing direct communication between the two 
worlds. He became fully convinced of the 
truth of that claim. 



ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 

I met Colonel Ingersoll for the first time 
in 1873. I was then a resident of Chicago 
and chairman of the lecture committee of 
the Free Religious Society. My associates 
on the committee and myself had read In- 
gersoll's lectures on "The Gods" and on 
Thomas Payne, delivered at Fairbury, 111., 
and published by himself. Those lectures 
had been widely read and had attracted a 
great deal of attention, and been commented 
upon favorably and unfavorably by the peo- 
ple, the press and the pulpit. We decided 
to invite him to give a lecture in our course. 
He accepted our invitation in a character- 
istic letter in which he said: 

"I will be glad to give you my new lec- 
ture on Individuality, and in reply to your 
question as to my terms, I will say that I 
will pay my own expenses and charge you 
nothing for my lecture. I won't come 
down a cent from that." 

His terms being satisfactory, the Society 
engaged him to lecture and realized a profit 
of over $100 on it, though the admission 
fee was only 25 cents. Those great news- 

203 



204 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

papers — the Times and Tribune — printed 
the lecture in full the next morning. That 
was the first lecture given by Colonel Inger- 
soll where an admission fee was charged, 
and may, therefore, be regarded as the oc- 
casion of his entering upon a career in which 
he achieved both fortune and fame. 

I deem it an interesting coincidence that 
I introduced Colonel Ingersoll to his au- 
dience and presided over his first lecture 
that I ever heard him deliver, and I intro- 
duced him and presided on the occasion of 
his giving the last lecture I ever heard him 
deliver, twenty-three years later. That last 
lecture was given at a beautiful seaside re- 
sort in the old Bay State but a few miles 
from Plymouth Rock. In the interim we 
had been neighbors for some years in the 
capital of the nation, where he and his great- 
hearted brother, Eben, practiced law to- 
gether. In some respects Eben Ingersoll 
was a greater man than Robert. He was 
both more conservative and more radical, 
more conservative along religious, lines and 
more radical in politics and sociology. 
Though I knew him but for a brief time, I 
fraternized with Eben more fully than I did 
with Robert, though Robert and myself 
were good friends always, yet we differed 
widely on nearly all public questions, in- 
cluding religion. That was his one great 
hobby. He was a special attorney for the 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 205 

heretics, and he took advantage of the li- 
cense of his profession to be very sarcastic 
and severe in his treatment of the opposing 
counsel, the clergy. He took every possible 
advantage of his opponent, that evidence, 
technicalities, logic, wit, humor or carcasm 
gave him. Yet there was no more malice in 
his denunciations of the Church than there 
was in his speeches before the jury in a 
court of law. Some of the preachers under- 
stood him and fraternized with him, just 
as opposing lawyers do after a hotly con- 
tested legal battle. I beg not to be under- 
stood to say that Colonel Ingersoll was 
insincere. He honestly opposed any creed 
that taught the doctrine of man's total de- 
pravity, and of a burning hell for those 
who do not believe in such doctrines. He 
visited Spain and explored the torture 
chambers built by Torquemada, where here- 
tics were put to death by slow tortures, the 
slowest and most terrible that could be de- 
vised. It was under the inspiration of that 
institution, the Inquisition, that Colonel In- 
gersoll wrote his lecture on "The Freedom 
of Man, Woman and Child." For the lov- 
ing gospel of the Universalists, the intellec- 
tual and cultured faith held by the Unita- 
rians, the silent worship and fraternal spirit 
of the Quakers and the optimistic creed of 
Spiritualism, Colonel Ingersoll had only kind 
words. 



206 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Sir William E. Gladstone and Hon. Jere- 
miah Black each attempted to answer In- 
gersoll's objections to the orthodox dogmas 
but the popular verdict was in Ingersoll's fa- 
vor. Colonel Ingersoll was greatly misun- 
derstood. Religious people generally 
thought him an atheist, but he was only an 
agnostic. He did not deny the existence 
of a God, nor the doctrine of a life after 
death. He only went so far as to say that 
he did not know. He said, "I will believe 
when the proof is presented." He was 
something of an iconoclast, a destroyer. It 
was his mission to tear down the outgrown 
temples of superstition. He was not a 
builder, the destroyer seldom is, but he is 
no less necessary to progress than his suc- 
cessor who erects upon the site of the old 
ruin the temple of the new time. The poet, 
Whittier, in his tribute to the reformer, 
credits him with the two-fold functions of 
the destroyer and the builder. Not having 
had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance 
with the distinguished Quaker poet, I can- 
not include him in the list of famous men 
I have known. For this reason, and for the 
still better reason that it fits so well into the 
woof of this tribute to one of his great ad- 
mirers, whom I have been told was admired 
by him, I am impressed to quote selections 
from that poem: 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 207 

"All grim and soiled and brown with tan 
I saw a strong one in his wrath, 

Smiting the Godless shrines of man, 
Along his path. 

The outgrown rite, the old abuse, 
The pious fraud transparent grown, 

The good held captive in the use 
Of wrong alone. 

But life shall on and upward go; 
The eternal step of Progress beats 

To that great anthem calm and slow, 

Which God repeats. 
Take heart, the waster builds again, 

A charmed life old goodness hath, 
The tares may perish — but the grain 

Is not for death. 

Colonel Ingersoll was too strongly de- 
nounced by his foes and too highly praised 
by his friends. He was a great orator, a 
wit and humorist of a high order; he had a 
tender heart that was easily touched by the 
sorrows of others; he was warm and gener- 
ous in his social relations, and as a husband 
and father he was sans peur et sans reproche. 
His lectures were entertaining in the high- 
est degree. His doctrines, or, rather, want 
of doctrines, did not draw the crowds that 
went to hear him, nor did his denunciation 
of wornout religious dogmas constitute the 
chief element of his drawing power. His 



208 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

lectures were replete with anecdote, wit, 
humor, poetry, pathos, and that still higher 
art of the orator — word painting — all com- 
bined with a dramatic power and skill that 
would have (made him a theatrical star of 
the first magnitude. In his home or his 
office he always had a good story to tell, 
and since the days of Lincoln I have never 
known a man who could excel him as a 
story teller. It is related of him that when 
a prisoner among the Confederates in 1863 
his ability to tell stories and say witty 
things made him so popular with his friends 
— the enemies — that the general in com- 
mand said to him: "I will arrange to ex- 
change you as soon as possible, for if you 
stay in my camp much longer you will be- 
come so popular with my soldiers that they 
will follow you when you do leave." 

Colonel Ingersoll's apostrophe to a glass 
of water and his funeral discourse over the 
dead body of his brother Eben are among 
the most beautiful utterances that ever 
dropped from the lips of man. Those and 
other gems of his are classic and will live 
and be read and admired long after his de- 
nunciations of the creeds have passed out 
of men's minds. 



LYDIA MiARIA CHILD. 

Among the results of our modern civili- 
zation the development of woman's powers 
of intellect stands out prominently, and 
among the glories of the religious and politi- 
cal progress of the age, none are more note- 
worthy than the emancipation of woman 
from the superstitions and tyrannies which 
were wont to hold her in slavery, soul and 
body. In all past history intellectual women 
were exceedingly exceptional. Now, and 
in this country, there are almost, or quite as 
many women as men, actively employed in 
the various fields of thought. 

Formerly women dared not advance an 
opinion upon any religious theme, or even 
repeat in a public way, the dogmas estab- 
lished by the priesthood. To-day she not 
only occupies the pulpit, from which to dis- 
pense the "Word," as interpreted by a mas- 
culine Presbytery or conference, but she is 
bringing to bear upon the knotty religious 
questions of the day the keen blade of her 
own analytical thought in a manner most 
effective. The modifications of religious 
forms and doctrines, so characteristic of this 
209 



210 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

age, is due, in large measure, to the humani- 
tarian leaven that woman has contributed 
to the new batch of the bread of life that 
is being handed out, in these later times 
from the pulpit and the press. This is prog- 
ress, or it is retrogression. It means that 
the race is advancing' toward the goal of a 
desirable destiny, or receding into a state 
of anarchy more deplorable than the bar- 
barism from which it has emerged. 

I believe most sincerely that the world is 
moving in the right direction, and there- 
fore rejoice in the evidences of increased and 
independent thought on the part of woman. 
I respect the honest conservatism that pro- 
tects, by all fair means, established ideas, but 
I honor still more the radicalism that ques- 
tions and criticises all things and destroys 
whatever is not good and true, however ven- 
erable. 

Lydia Maria Child was a constitutional 
radical. She comes of a radical family, and 
her life-lines have been cast amid radical 
surroundings. Her father, Convers Francis, 
was one of the first abolitionists of Massa- 
chusetts. Her brother, Doctor Francis, was 
one of the most eminent Unitarian ministers 
of his day, and the theological preceptor of 
Theodore Parker; and her most intimate 
friends have been such spirits as Emerson, 
Parker, Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Lloyd Gar- 
rison and Isaac T. Hopper. 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 211 

Mrs. Child was born in 1802, and her 
mind having been turned to literature at an 
early age, she was one of the first literary 
lights of America. Her first production 
was a poem entitled "Yamoyden," pub- 
lished in 1 82 1. This was before Irving or 
Cooper or Mrs. Sedgwick had become fa- 
mous; before the school of American literati 
that has, during the last three-quarters of a 
century, crowned our native land with glory, 
had fairly been inaugurated. She was one 
of the founders of that school and one of 
its most honored members. 

"Habamok," an Indian romance, was her 
first novel. Its scenes were laid among the 
savages of New England, and the story, 
aside from its romance, possesses much of 
historic interest. This was followed by "The 
Rebels," an ante-revolutionary story, which 
proved a great success. She was a great 
lover of children, and a most successful 
teacher in her youth. In 1827 she started 
the first child's paper ever attempted, under 
the title of 'The Juvenile Miscellany." 
While engaged in the delightful but rather 
arduous duties of teacher and editor, Lydia 
took to herself a husband in the person of 
David L. Child, of Boston, a gentleman of 
culture and a lawyer by profession. This 
was in 1828; and the next year she gave 
to the world that wonderfully popular cook 
book, "The Frugal Housewife," which was 



212 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

followed by a work entitled "Mother's 
Book/' that was read widely in this country 
and England, and translated and read by 
the Germans. "The Girl's Own Book" 
came out soon after the above, and "The 
History of Woman" in 1832. Then followed 
in rapid succession "Biographies of Good 
Wives," the memoirs of Madame De Stael 
and Madame Roland, of Lady Russell and 
of Madame Guyon. Until now, 1833, Mrs. 
Child's writings had not been sufficiently 
radical upon any subject of public interest 
to excite any special prejudice. Her career 
had been a brilliant one, and she was a liter- 
ary favorite. 

Garrison had started the Liberator in 
1 83 1, however, and Mrs. Child responded 
to the sentiments that filled its pages by 
writing a book on slavery, entitled, "An 
Appeal for That Class of Americans Held 
in Slavery." It seems hardly credible that 
so mild an appeal for the oppressed should 
have produced such a storm of prejudice 
against its author as to almost wholly stop 
the sale of her other books. But we should 
remember that at that period a large ma- 
jority of even the best people believed in 
slavery. All political parties, and every 
church in the land, save the Quakers, Dunk- 
ards and Wesleyan Methodists sustained it, 
and only a small band of ultra radicals, 
among the Quakers of Philadelphia and the 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 213 

Unitarians and Free Thinkers of Boston, 
were found to oppose it actively. 

Lydia Maria Child was the leading spirit 
among these, and this work of hers, the first 
anti-slavery book ever published. 

Even the renowned and saintly Channing 
opposed the agitation of the slavery ques- 
tion until he read Mrs. Child's book. But 
so active a convert was he that, in 1835, he 
also wrote a book against slavery. Miss 
Martineau, in her work entitled, 'The Mar- 
tyr Age in America," justly gives Mrs. 
Child a leading place, for she sacrificed the 
most brilliant literary and financial pros- 
pects at that time enjoyed by any American 
author, to the espousal of the most unpopu- 
lar cause that the ripening conscience of 
humanity had then developed. She wrote 
several other works and numerous tracts, 
which had a large circulation through the 
efforts of the Anti-Slavery Society. 

She did not abandon polite literature en- 
tirely, however, but in 1836 gave to the 
world a novel entitled, "Philothea," a story 
of ancient Greece, a most classical work, but 
which did not meet with much favor because 
of the prejudice against its author. Mrs. 
Sarah Jane Hale, in her "Woman's Record," 
rejoiced at the failure of this book, and 
styled it a just rebuke to the author for 
wasting her powers in such senseless radi- 
calism as the anti-slavery cause. 



214 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

From 1 841 to 1849 Mrs. Child and her 
husband edited the Anti-Slavery Standard, 
a weekly paper published in New York by 
the American Anti-slavery Society. During 
these years she found a home with that emi- 
nent humanitarian reformer, Isaac T. Hop- 
per, whose biographer she afterward became. 

She watched with deep interest the Brook 
Farm Experiment, and sympathized some- 
what with the efforts at association being 
made by the disciples of Fourier, but she did 
not go to the extent in it that Emerson and 
some others did. She believed that if selfish- 
ness could be kept in subjection, Fourier's 
ideas might become practical. 

A juvenile book, "Flowers for Children," 
issued in 1852, had a large sale, and her 
"Life of Isaac T. Hopper," published in 
1853, met with great favor. Already the 
anti-slavery cause was becoming popular 
and its champions honorable. In 1855 Mrs. 
Child gave to the world the great work of 
her life in the form of a book in three vol- 
umes entitled, "The Progress of Religious 
Ideas." She spent many of the best years 
of her life in the preparation of this work, 
and it is a most learned production. It is 
a complete and comprehensive review of the 
outworkings of the religious instinct in all 
ages and among all peoples. This book takes 
the broad, charitable view that can see vir- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 215 

tue in an opponent and recognize truth 
though met with on heathen ground. 

"Autumnal Leaves/' brought out in 
1857, "Looking Toward Sunset," a volume 
of pleasant poetry issued in 1864, "The 
Freedman's Book," in 1865, and a "Ro- 
mance of the Republic," in 1867, complete 
the catalogue of the more prominent works 
of this talented and industrious author. 

At a ripe and beautiful old age Mrs. 
Child retired to her country seat at Way- 
land, Mass., where, with her husband and 
a few choice friends, she spent in quiet the 
evening of her days. 



FRANCIS A. WALKER. 

Francis A. Walker was the son of that 
eminent political economist, Professor 
Amasa Walker, of Yale University, and he 
was his father's successor in that important 
chair for a time. This distinguished man 
arose from the position of a private soldier 
to the rank of brigadier-general in the great 
Civil War. He was one of the youngest 
men to achieve rank and fame as a soldier, 
being but twenty-five years of age when 
the war ended. He was pre-eminently en- 
dowed with executive talent. General Grant 
recognized this, and desiring to inaugurate 
some important reforms in the Indian Bu- 
reau, appointed General Walker Commis- 
sioner of Indian Affairs, and it is simply 
just to say that no better officer ever oc- 
cupied that important position. The Qua- 
kers and the Indians esteemed him highly, 
while thieving agents and conscienceless 
land grabbers feared and hated him. He 
afterward filled the important and arduous 
position of superintendent of the census 
for two terms. That is a field in which ex- 
ecutive talent and scholarly training are both 
216 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS. 217 

needed, and it is generally conceded that 
Francis A. Walker was the best superin- 
tendent of the census bureau we ever had. 

I made the personal acquaintance of Gen- 
eral Walker in 1879. We became warm 
personal friends before we had known each 
other very long. I saw in him the varied 
elements that enter into the constitution of 
a noble manhood, well balanced and highly 
developed. 

Socially he was one of the most charaning 
men I ever met, and one of the most kind 
hearted and obliging. I never had occasion 
to ask of him a favor for myself, but I did 
for others more than once. Indeed, it was 
through going to him on behalf of another 
that I became acquainted with him. I had 
asked Secretary Schurz, of the Interior De- 
partment, to appoint a man well qualified for 
a clerkship in one of his numerous bureaus, 
and he had said, "If General Walker can find 
work for this man I will appoint him to a 
clerkship in the census bureau." 

The applicant had lost both feet, they 
having been frozen while he was in the mail 
service in the far West. He was unable to 
do manual labor, but was well fitted for 
clerical work. On my stating the case to 
General Walker, he said: "My force is 
about full, but I will find work for this 
worthy man." He showed heartsomeness, 



218 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

a quality which I have found sadly wanting 
in some other public officials. 

It is not as a soldier or a civil public 
official that Francis A. Walker will be re- 
membered longest. His great achievements 
were found in the field of practical scholar- 
ship applied to the great science of political 
economy. He was one of the founders, and 
from the first until his death he was president 
of "The American Economic Association," 
an organization composed of the greatest 
scientists of this country, and which has done 
much to promote progress along economic 
lines. The doctrine of public ownership of 
railways and all other natural monopolies, is 
cardinal with the American Economic Asso- 
ciation, and the growing popularity of that 
doctrine is due in large measure to its pub- 
lished proceedings, and to the writings of 
President Walker, Secretary Ely, Professor 
Lester F. Ward and other able and dis- 
tinguished members. 

President Walker's annual addresses are 
among the greatest of its papers, being re- 
plete with scientific facts and philosophical 
deductions, clothed in robes of classic elo- 
quence; and his books are standard works 
on political economy and sociology. 

On completing his work in the census bu- 
beau, General Walker accepted the presi- 
dency of the College of Technology, one of 
Boston's greatest institutions, which position 



PIONEERS GF PROGRESS 219 

he filled with distinguished ability until his 
untimely demise in 1896, at the age of 
fifty-six years. 

He was constantly in demand for public 
addresses before learned societies, colleges 
and public assemblages of thoughtful men, 
and so he exhausted his brain and nervous 
system until the vital forces gave up the 
conflict. Less than a month before his 
death I warned him of the danger that men- 
aced him and urged him to take a rest. 

"I cannot," he replied, "the pressure of 
work is upon me and I can see no stop- 
ping place." 

"You must rest," I urged. "If you do 
not take a voluntary rest you will take an 
involuntary one very soon, and it will be 
permanent, so far as this world is con- 
cerned." I was not surprised, therefore, at 
the announcement of the sudden death of this 
eminently useful man, who ought to have 
lived and worked a quarter of a century 
longer, for he had a good constitution and 
was temperate in all things except work. 

President Walker's book, "Money, Trade 
and Industry," published in 1881, is the 
ablest exposition of the money problem 
I have ever read. If that book could be 
read by every voter of this nation the people 
would take the money question into politics 
in an intelligent way and settle it, for this 
country, at least. He wrote as a scientist, 



220 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

and not as a partisan, hence his facts and de- 
ductions are so clearly stated that all who 
have what is known as common sense can 
understand him. His sympathies were with 
the common people, and he wrote in the in- 
terest of the great mass of wealth producers, 
as against the limited class who live off the 
labor of their fellows. I dare not attempt 
in my limited space to summarize that great 
book. To be fully comprehended it should 
be read in its entirety and without prejudice. 
It is to be found in nearly all the libraries 
in the country. 



HENRY GEORGE. 

An Indian called at my home in Washing- 
ton, D. C, one day in 1880, and presented 
me a book, with a request that I read it. 
That book bore the title, "Progress and 
Poverty/' by Henry George. I thought the 
title quite incongruous, as I had not been 
accustomed to associate the two words, 
progress and poverty, as having any such 
relations as cause and effect. My Indian 
friend pronounced the book the greatest 
work he had ever read. He said, "The 
author of that work has exposed in a mas- 
terly manner the false basis of the white 
'man's systetai of land tenure, and shows it to 
be the cornerstone of the hydra-headed 
monopoly which has divided the people into 
classes, the extreme representatives of 
which are millionaires and tramps, neither of 
which were known a century ago. Henry 
George has shown in this book the logical 
relations between millionaires and paupers." 

On visiting Indian Territory a few years 
later, I found that Henry George's book was 
very popular with the educated men of the 
five civilized tribes, "Cherokee, Creek, Choc- 
taw, Chickasaw and Seminole. 5 ' 
221 



222 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

It was while on my way from Atoka to 
Tushkahuma that I read, for the first time, 
Henry George's reply to the criticisms of 
the Duke of Argyle upon his book. My 
Indian traveling companion had slipped a 
copy of it into his pocket before starting, and 
handed it to me to read as we drove along, 
with the remark that, as he was a poor 
talker, he had "brought Mr. George along to 
entertain us on the way." I could not fail 
to see that Mr. George had the better of the 
argument. 

There are other causes of poverty besides 
land monopoly, and those causes have been 
pointed out by other writers. But Henry 
George did the world a great service and 
deserves to be classed among the pioneers of 
progress. 

It is not to be expected that any one 
man should see the whole truth, for man's 
intellect is limited. Wendell Phillips, reply- 
ing to a critic who had pronounced him a 
man of one idea, said, "If I have one well- 
developed idea, which is of value to the 
world, I am exceptionally endowed, for very 
few men have even one idea of their own." 

Concentration is an essential element of 
power. Henry George concentrated his 
large brain upon the one theme of land 
monopoly as a cause of poverty, and in an 
effort to present a plan for the abolition of 
the cause and the effect. As to the measure 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 223 

of his success, people differ; but as to his 
ability, sincerity and intense devotion, there 
is but one opinion among those who knew 
him. 

I made the personal acquaintance of Mr. 
George in 1884. I was charmed with him. 
He was a companionable man, social and 
genial. He and I fraternized at once and 
were ever afterward warm friends. The 
Duke of Argyle derisively referred to Henry 
George as "the prophet of San Francisco," 
a title which his friends accepted. From a 
paper read before the Chicago Literary Club, 
in 1903, by Mr. Louis F. Post, and pub- 
lished by L. S. Dickey & Co. of Chicago, in 
a pamphlet of 48 pages, I quote this : "Like 
the prophets of Israel, Henry George warned 
a corrupted civilization that it must mend 
its ways or perish. Like them, he proclaimed 
anew the immutable decree that man must 
conform to the laws of righteousness or 
suffer the natural consequences of unright- 
eousness. Listen to his warning cry." 

"The fiat has gone forth, with steam and 
electricity, and the new powers born of 
progress, forces have entered the world that 
will either compel us to a higher plane or 
overwhelm us, as nation after nation, and 
civilization after civilization, have been over- 
whelmed before. * * * If, while there is yet 
time, we turn to Justice and obey her, if we 
trust Liberty _and follow her, the dangers 



224 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

that now threaten must disappear, the forces 
that now menace will turn to agencies of 
elevation." 

Henry George, though not a churchman, 
was intensely religious. But his friends point 
to the fact that the prophets of Israel were 
outside the orthodox church and very severe 
in their criticisms of the priests. Mr. George 
numbered among his friends many preach- 
ers, and some were disciples of his, notably 
Dr. McGlyn of the Catholic Church and Dr. 
Lyman Abbott of the Congregational. Mr. 
George once gave me a very cordial letter 
of introdutcion to Dr. Lyman Abott, which 
I failed, however, of opportunity to deliver. 

Henry George was much broader in his 
reform thought than the world has credited 
him with being. He is so thoroughly identi- 
fied with his theory of land reform that 
people forget that he was a tariff reformer, 
a money reformer, and, in fact, an all round 
reformer. 

This distinguished man was born in Phila- 
delphia in 1839, °f English and Scotch 
parentage, though his father and mother 
were both born in America. He was a 
printer by trade. He went to San Francisco 
in 1858 and worked at his trade till 1866, 
when he became a reporter, soon afterward 
an editorial writer, and then managing edi- 
tor. He was one of the founders of the San 
Francisco Post. But the time came when he 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 225 

had to choose between conducting it as a 
reform paper and giving it up and go out 
of a profitable enterprise into poverty. He 
did not hesitate, but chose the latter alterna- 
tive. Governor Irwin appointed him to a 
small office, which was the only office he 
ever held. He was nominated for the Legis- 
lature of California, in 1869, by the Demo- 
cratic party, but was not elected. In 1877 
he was the Democratic candidate for dele- 
gate to the Constitutional Convention. The 
workingman's party also nominated him, 
but, on hearing that he was expected to sub- 
mit to the leadership of Dennis Kearney, 
Mr. George said to the convention, 'There 
are some planks in the platform I cannot 
endorse, and I will not submit to Mr. 
Kearney's dictation." The nomination was 
at once withdrawn and George was defeated 
by the Kearney candidate nominated in his 
place. But Kearney is almost forgotten, 
while George enjoys a constantly growing 
fame. 

"Progress and Poverty" was published in 
1879 by the author, most of the type being 
set by himself. The book sold slowly at 
first, but soon began to attract attention, and 
within a few years it reached an enormous 
sale in this country and Europe. It has 
been translated and published in every civil- 
ized country. He wrote some other works, 
"Social Problems" being the chief one. 



226 FIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

Mr. George was an independent candidate 
for mayor of New York in 1886, he being 
nominated by petition, thirty-four thousand 
men signing the petition. Tammany offered 
him a seat in Congress if he would decline 
the race for mayor, and, on his refusing this 
bribe, the two wings of the democracy 
united upon Abram S. Hewitt, who was 
elected. Theodore Roosevelt was the Re- 
publican candidate against George. Hewitt's 
vote was 90,000; Roosevelt got 60,000, and 
George 68,000 votes. 

In 1897 Mr. George was a candidate for 
mayor of New York on the labor reform 
ticket. His very strenuous life had begun 
to tell on his health, and this campaign 
broke him down. He closed his work on 
earth by addressing three audiences in one 
evening. The chairman of the meeting 
where he spoke first that evening introduced 
him as the great friend of labor. Mr. George 
opened his speech with these grand and sig- 
nificant words: 

"I have never claimed to be a special 
friend of the laboring man. Let us have 
done with this call for special privileges for 
labor. Labor does not want special privi- 
leges. I have never advocated, nor asked 
for, special rights or special sympathy for 
workingmen. What I stand for is the equal 
rights of all men." 

In the words of Louis Post, when the next 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 227 

day broke the prophet of San Francisco lay 
dead. The culminating hour of his consecra- 
tion had come, when the eyeballs glazed 
and the ears grew dull, and out of the dark- 
ness had stretched the hand, and into the 
silence had come the voice, "Well done, thou 
good and faithful servant." 

Same twenty years ago, I wrote a story, 
entitled, "A Squatter," founded upon the 
actual experience of a pioneer Hoosier, who 
in 1820 built a cabin, cleared a farm, planted 
an orchard, etc., on an eighty-acre tract of 
public land, with the intention of paying the 
Government for it as soon as he could save 
money enough to do so. I am impressed 
to quote briefly from that story, as an illus- 
tration of the injustice and hardships suf- 
fered by many of the early settlers of this 
country. 

"The fourth year in the new country was 
drawing to a close. Amos Trueblood had 
raised a large crop of corn for the acreage 
planted, and had fatted twenty hogs, that 
would average two hundred pounds each, 
net weight, and would sell for thirty-six dol- 
lars. He must keep enough pork for his 
own use, but he could sell thirty dollars' 
worth at the least. He had been able to 
spare thirty bushels of wheat that fall, which 
brought him ten dollars, and Ruth had sold 
twenty dollars' worth of chickens and butter 
during the season, half of which had gone 



228 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

for store goods, and half had been put into 
the purse that contained the fund being 
saved up to pay for the home. The hogs 
were killed, the pork sold, and Amos and 
Ruth sat by the uncleared supper table 
counting their savings. There could be no 
mistake in the count, for both had counted 
the hoard dollar by dollar two or three 
times, and it came out one hundred and ten 
dollars each time. 

"Well, little wife, it's been a long pull 
and a strong pull for us, but at last we've 
got money enough to pay for our home. I 
must start to the Land Office to-morrow 
morning. Thee must get solme neighbor 
woman to stay with thee to-morrow night, 
and I hope to git back the next night." 

With one hundred silver dollars, in two 
purses, in the right and left pockets of 
Jonathan Lindley's great coat, borrowed for 
the journey, and two dollars in change for 
expenses, Amos Trueblood started for Vin- 
cennes at dawn of day. His heart was full 
of hope; hence nature wore a pleasant face. 
It was a lonely ride of forty-five miles, 
through a very sparsely settled region, and 
over a road little traveled, save by men on 
errands like his own. The country was in- 
fested by highwaymen, hence the journey 
was not wholly free from peril. Those 
knights of the road rarely attacked travelers 
in daytime, but men often rode all night to 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 229 

get to the Land Office in advance of others 
who were suspected of wanting the same 
tract of land they had selected. These night 
riders usually went armed, but their weap- 
ons did not always protect thetm from being 
robbed. Many blood-curdling tales of mid- 
night adventures with members of "Murrel's 
band" were current in that country in those 
days, and long afterward.. 

Amos had little fear of being robbed, for 
he would reach Vincennes before sunset, yet 
he kept his wits about him, and was keenly 
alert, when passing through particularly 
lonely stretches of forest. About 2 p. m., 
while letting his horse drink from a small 
stream he was fording, he caught a glimpse 
of a horseman approaching the road he was 
traveling, from the right, a short distance 
in advance of him. It was a lonely place. 
Not a cabin had been passed for some miles. 
Visions of highwaymen were at once sug- 
gested, yet the stranger might be an honest 
man. Be that as it might, Amos could only 
proceed on his journey. Just as he reached 
the intersection of the bridle-path the 
stranger was in, and the main road, the 
horseman turned into the road, and saluted 
Amos with: 

"Howdy, stranger?" 

"I am quite well; how does thee do?" 

Instead of answering Amos' question as 
to the state of his health, the stranger said: 



230 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

"On your way to Vincennes?" 
"Yes, that is where I'm bound." 
"Live about here?" 
"No, my home is on White River." 
"Goin' to enter land, I reckon?" 
"Yes, I'm on my way to enter an eighty- 
acre tract that I settled on as a squatter on 
first earning West four years ago. I've not 
been able to pay for it before, though it only 
takes a hundred dollars." 

Amos thought that if the man was a rob- 
ber, surely he could not be mean enough 
to rob him, if he knew that he was a poor 
squatter who had worked hard for four years 
to raise money enough to pay for his home. 
He was mistaken. Having obtained the 
information he sought, the fellow suddenly 
drew a pistol from his pocket, and pointing 
its muzzle at Amos' breast, he ordered him 
to throw up his hands. The command had 
scarcely escaped his lips when Amos struck 
him a blow on the left ear, that felled him to 
the ground. His pistol went off while he 
was falling, the ball entering his own horse, 
bringing him down also. Our hero did not 
stop to take special note of the damage to 
the enemy resulting from his blow, but strik- 
ing his horse with a hickory switch, and 
kicking him in the flanks with his heels, he 
galloped away in the direction of Vincennes. 
Proceeding at once to the Land Office, he 
presented to the register a slip of paper 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 231 

containing a description of his land. The 
official referred to a record book, and then 
turning to Amos, he said: 

"That tract is not public land." 

"Surely thee is .mistaken," responded 
Amos. 

"No, that tract was entered in the name 
of John Bolton on the ioth of last month." 

"Why, John Bolton is in North Carolina." 

"Very likely, but he has an agent in this 
State who is picking up choice tracts of land 
for him, and the tract you want is now his 
property." 

Amos' heart sank within him. For a 
moment he stood speechless and pale, but, 
recovering himself, he said: 

"An hour or so ago a highway robber 
pointed a pistol at me, and demanded my 
money. I struck him a blow that knocked 
him off his horse, and, as he fell, his pistol 
went off and killed his horse, at least he fell 
like he was shot through the heart. It was 
only a hundred dollars I had, but it was the 
price of my little home, and had cost me and 
my wife four years of hard work and close 
saving. Now I find that I am robbed of my 
home by a rich man who does not need it a 
tenth part as bad as that robber needed my 
hundred dollars." 

"Pm sorry for you, my friend," said the 
official, "but such things happen every day." 



ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE. 

Alfred Russell Wallace was born in Eng- 
land in 1823. His father was a barrister, 
but inheriting an income sufficient to sup- 
port him, he lived the life of an idle English 
gentleman till he was 35 years of age, when 
he married, and afterward, until the family 
had become so large that his income was 
insufficient to meet his expenses. Then, in- 
stead of opening a law office, he turned 
gardener. He was an excellent illustration 
of the proverb, "A certainty in life paralyzes 
ambition." 

Alfred left home at the age of fourteen, 
going to London, where he became a me- 
chanic. He was a good hand worker, but 
brain work was needed far more than hand 
work, and he was by inheritance, chiefly 
from his mother, well equipped for an in- 
tellectual career. The first thought-provok- 
ing book which he read was one by Robert 
Owen, which taught that heredity and en- 
vironment form the character of men, in- 
stead of its being formed by the personal 
efforts of the individual. Wallace refused to 
believe this and determined to shape his 
232 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 233 

character to suit himself. He had an ideal 
which he wished to realize, if possible. While 
he accepted the fact that environment was 
a factor in forming character, he believed 
that a strong will and high ambition can 
lift one above the forming power of circum- 
stances, that are external. Fortunately, his 
attention was called to phrenology, and that 
great science and philosophy confirmed him 
in his view, for he had inherited a brain 
which served as an excellent organ for 
scientific investigation, philosophic deduc-* 
tion, and the strength of conscience and will 
power that gave him the courage of his con- 
victions. Instead of being a creature of cir- 
cumstances, he was a centrestance, compel- 
ling circumstances to be his servants instead 
of his masters. 

At the age of twenty-four Mr. Wallace 
first had his attention called to geology. 
This was the beginning of his studies in nat- 
ural sciences, the genesis of his great career 
which has made him world famous. He 
was as profoundly versed in geology, botany 
and other branches of natural science as 
Darwin, and had written extensively on that 
subject before he had met Darwin in 1862. 
Those two men fraternized at once, and 
from that time they were colaborers in de- 
veloping the theory of evolution, now so 
generally accepted as a scientific solution 
of the origin of life and of the philosophy 



234 PIONEERS OP PROGRESS 

of progression. Darwin's "Origin of Spe- 
cies" is a joint work in which Wallace per- 
formed an important part. He traveled ex- 
tensively in the interest of science, visiting 
South America, Borneo, Singapore, the 
country of the Malays, etc., etc., gathering 
facts, not for the purpose of bolstering up 
a theory, but from which to evolve a phi- 
losophy. He has, from the first, held that 
facts are of no value unless they can be used 
to construct a royal highway to the realm of 
philosophy, and that philosophy to be of 
value must be prophetic as well as reminis- 
cent; that it should enable us to penetrate 
the veil of the future, as well as read the 
records of the past and deduce its lessons. 
While struggling with the problem of the 
origin of life Wallace called on Herbert 
Spencer, hoping to get from that distin- 
guished man a clue to it. But Spencer con- 
fessed his inability to aid him. All he could 
say was that everything pointed toward the 
conclusion that life was a development out of 
matter; a phase of that continuous process 
of evolution by which the whole universe 
had been brought to its present condition. 
This was as far as Darwin could get. But 
Wallace subsequently went farther. He saw 
with philosophic insight what those great 
men had failed to discover; that life is pri- 
mary, matter secondary. Instead of life be- 
ing an evolutionary product of matter, mat- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 235 

ter has simply been a phenomenal product 
of intelligent life. 

Wallace says : "Darwin taught, that man's 
whole nature, physical, mental and moral, 
was developed from the lower animals, by 
means of the same laws of variation and 
survival, and as a consequence of this be- 
lief, that there was no difference in kind 
between man's nature and animal nature, but 
only one of degree." My view, on the other 
hand, was and is, that there is a difference in 
kind, intellectually and morally, between man 
and other animals, and that while his body 
was undoubtedly developed by the continu- 
ous modification of some ancestral animal 
form, some different agency, analogous to 
that which first produced organic life and 
then original consciousness, came into play 
in order to develop the higher intellectual 
and spiritual nature of man. 

These views caused much distress in the 
mind of Darwin, but they do not in the 
least affect the general doctrine of natural 
selection. The difference in views did not 
affect the personal relations of Darwin and 
Wallace, which were always most cordial 
and fraternal. That Darwin had a very 
high opinion of Wallace's scientific attain- 
ments and opinions is proven by the follow- 
ing: Wallace says: "February 23, 1867, 
Darwin wrote me, asking if I could solve a 



236 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

difficulty for him." He says : "I called on 
Bates and put a difficulty before him, which 
he could not answer, and, as on some similar 
occasions, his first suggestion was, 'You had 
better ask Wallace/ " 

"I wrote him my view of the matter, and 
he replied as follows: 

"'My Dear Wallace: 

" 'Bates was quite right ; you are the man 
to apply to in a difficulty. I never heard 
anything more ingenious than your sugges- 
tion and I hope you may be able to prove it 
to be true.' " 

Doctor Wallace has enjoyed intimate per- 
sonal relations with about all the great scien- 
tists and philosophers of his time, including 
Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Tindall, Lub- 
bock, Carpenter, Hooker, Lockyear, Mivart, 
Newton, Lyell, and many of less fame. He 
puts Huxley above all others as an intellect- 
ual giant and profound scholar. Prof. St. 
George Mivart he speaks of as rather an un- 
fair critic of Darwin, he being a sincere 
Catholic, yet one of the most charming men 
he ever met, and a great scholar. He often 
dined with Mivart, and on such occasions 
he usually met one or more Catholic 
priests, whom he found to be genial, com- 
panionable and full of wit and humor. 

Doctor Wallace has written many books, 
chiefly scientific and philosophical, but he is 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 237 

a many sided man. He has delved deeply 
into sociology and psychic phenomena. He 
has developed a theory of land nationaliza- 
tion which is very different from Henry 
George's single tax scheme. 

During his visit to Washington City in 
1888 the author of this sketch gave Doctor 
Wallace a reception and invited fifty or more 
of the best thinkers of the city to meet him 
and hear him expound his theory of land na- 
tionalization. It proved to be very similar 
to the system of the American Indians, 
which is, that the land is a gift from the 
Great Spirit to the entire nation and should 
be held by the tribe or nation in fee, for the 
common and equal occupancy of the people, 
each member of the tribe being entitled to 
an equal portion, or as much as he can use, 
to be held by possessory title, without origi- 
nal payment or subsequent tax. Hon. 
H. M. Teller, then Secretary of the Depart- 
ment of the Interior, said to the writer in 
1884: "Just between you and I, the Indians 
are right on the land question and we are 
wrong." The Jewish land polity under the 
law of Moses was substantially the same. 

When visiting the capital of the Chicka- 
saw Nation in 1886 I was invited to address 
a joint meeting of the two houses of the 
council, and on the close of my speech an 
educated Indian responded. After express- 



238 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

ing in eloquent words his appreciation of my 
views of the Indian problem and thanking 
me for my defense of his people, he said: 

"There is not a homeless man, woman or 
child in this nation. Some live in humble 
cabins, but no rack renter or tax collector 
can dispossess them; nor can an imprudent 
man sell his land and squander the price of 
it, thus rendering his family homeless. This 
you cannot say of your nation, which boasts 
of the civilization of its people. I have read 
your history and know that when your gov- 
ernment was founded 90 per cent of your 
people owned homes of their own, while 
now, at the close of the first century of your 
history, over 90 per cent of them are ten- 
ants, liable to be turned out of their rented 
homes for failure to pay rents fixed by 
grasping landlords. We ask you to urge 
your lawmakers, who assume to be our 
guardians, not to force us to adopt your 
policy, which has resulted so disastrously to 
your people." 

I repeated that speech to a committee of 
Congress and it produced no practical effect. 
The white man's land policy has been forced 
upon the Indians. That some progress has 
been made along this line is shown by a 
fact given by Doctor Wallace, which is, that 
in 1775, the initial year of the American 
Revolution, a school teacher in England was 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 239 

expelled from a philosophical society, forced 
to give up his school and leave his town for 
reading a paper advocating the nationaliza- 
tion and equal distribution of land. Doctor 
Wallace has not been so badly treated as 
his humble predecessor. He is punished 
only by being called a radical. When the 
Anglo-Saxon nations shall have become fully 
civilized he will be honored as a pioneer of 
progress on many lines. 

With Herbert Spencer, Gladstone and 
other great men, Wallace has made an hon- 
orable record as an opponent of compulsory 
vaccination. He says: 

"I was brought up to believe that vacci- 
nation was a scientific procedure, and that 
Jenner was one of the great benefactors of 
mankind." He found it difficult to change 
his views, as so many men believed in vacci- 
nation. But Mr. Tebbs got him to look at 
the other side of the question and he became 
convinced by statistics and arguments that 
vaccination did not prevent smallpox, but 
did produce other diseases which often 
caused death. Herbert Spencer had pointed 
out that the first compulsory vaccination act 
had led to an increase of smallpox. He gave 
the subject that careful study which, as a 
scientist, he had given other great subjects, 
with the result that he became one of the 
ablest and most powerful opponents of one 



240 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

of the greatest delusions that history 
records. 

I now come to the latest and most widely 
known and discussed of Doctor Wallace's 
heresies. I use the term heresy merely in 
the popular sense — a belief which is not in 
accord with the orthodox faith, nor held by 
a majority of the people. In his autobiog- 
raphy entitled, "My Life/' recently published 
in two large volumes in England, and also 
in America, there is a chapter of over 70 
pages entitled, "Mesmerism to Spiritualism. ,, 
In this chapter he presents very frankly the 
facts which he obtained through careful 
scientific investigation covering a long 
period, which convinced him long ago that 
mesmerism is a science, and later that spirit- 
ualism furnishes scientific proof that human 
life is continuous; that death is simply an in- 
cident in the evolution of life, and that com- 
munication between those who have passed 
to the celestial realms and those still in the 
body, is possible and actually has occurred, 
and is continually occurring all over the 
world. Sir William Crooks and Doctor Wal- 
lace, as members of a committee of the dia- 
lectical branch of the Royal Society, inves- 
tigated spiritualistic phenomena diligently 
for some years and reported that the phe- 
nomena were abundant and genuine and 
they could not be explained upon any other 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 241 

hypothesis but the spiritual. Those two emi- 
nent men have continued their studies along 
that line and they have been joined by quite 
a large number of distinguished men ; among 
these he mentions Professor Varley, Profes- 
sor Chambers, Gladstone, St. George Mivart 
and T. W. H. Myers, who later became pres- 
ident of the Psychic Research Society, 



JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

Ireland has produced some great men. 
Storm and stress give opportunity to men 
who have within them the elements of great- 
ness. But the trials which bring out the 
noble qualities of souls crush into slavish 
submission those who lack those qualities. 
English rule over Ireland has crushed the 
masses of her people, but there have always 
been a few heroic men who could not be 
subjugated by the iron rule of tyranny and 
robbery. John Boyle O'Reilly was one of 
those. That noble Celt was born in Done- 
gal, 1844. His father was a man of su- 
perior ability and a scholar of distinction 
who gave his son a classic training. On 
reaching manhood John joined the Fenians 
and soon became a leader in that organized 
effort to liberate Ireland from British rule. 
He was arrested on a charge of treason and 
sentenced to be shot, in 1866. That sen- 
tence was, through the influence of English 
friends of prominence, commuted to im- 
prisonment for life, at hard labor in an En- 
gish prison. In 1867 this was changed to 
penal servitude in Australia. Through the 

242 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 243 

aid of a native girl he escaped in 1869 and 
sailed for America. Here he lectured on the 
wrongs of Ireland for a year, when he ac- 
cepted a position on "The Pilot," a Roman 
Catholic journal published in Boston. He 
joined in a Fenian raid into Canada, and 
corresponded with "The Pilot." In 1874 he 
bought that journal and from that time until 
his death, in 1890, he was its editor. He 
was not limited to editorial work, but wrote 
essays, poems, etc., for various periodicals, 
and delivered many lectures on literary, po- 
litical and sociological subjects. He was a 
bold and radical thinker on all lines, unless 
I except religion, and he had the courage 
of his convictions, save when his opinion 
conflicted with the dictum of the Pope, 
whom he had been from childhood taught 
to regard as the supreme authority on re- 
ligious questions. 

I was introduced to Mr. O'Reilly in, 1888 
by a Catholic friend who sympathized with 
the views of Indian policy held by the 
Indian Defense Association, which organiza- 
tion I represented as corresponding secre- 
tary and editor of its organ, "The Council 
Fire." That policy was to protect the Indian 
tribes in their right to hold their lands in 
common until they could be educated in our 
system of severalty land ownership and be 
prepared in some measure, at least, to pro- 
tect themselves against the greed and cun- 



244 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

ning of white men. Our interview lasted an 
hour, during which I did most of the talk- 
ing, my auditor limiting himself to such 
questions as he thought needful to bring out 
my views in the clearest manner. At the 
close he said: 

"Doctor Bland, I had supposed that the 
Indian policy of Senator Dawes was just 
and humane, but you have convinced me 
that it is radically wrong. The Pilot is your 
paper. In it you are at liberty to express 
your views on Indian matters freely and I 
will sustain you." The following issue of 
The Pilot contained an editorial against the 
Dawes land in severalty bill, then before 
Congress. Senator Dawes immediately sent 
in a reply to that editorial, in which he as- 
sumed that it had been inspired, if not actu- 
ally written, by Doctor Bland. I was lec- 
turing in Boston at the time and on receiv- 
ing the Senator's letter Mr. O'Reilly sent 
me a note by special messenger, asking me 
to call at his office. I responded promptly. 
He greeted me with: 

"I have a letter from Dawes, which I am 
not fully prepared to answer, so I want your 
help." 

On reading the Senator's communication, 
I suggested that O'Reilly interview me on 
the letter and print the letter in full with my 
criticisms on it. "That is the thing to do," 
he said. The Senator let the matter rest 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 245 

there and from that time the editor of The 
Pilot' was one of my strongest allies. We 
were in agreement on about every question 
of public policy, and our personal relations 
were cordial and fraternal in the best sense. 
John Boyle O'Reilly and Wendell Phil- 
lips were great admirers of each other and 
warm personal friends. Having recorded 
this fact, it seems to me scarcely necessary 
to add anything in the way of detail as to 
the views of that distinguished Irish-Ameri- 
can on the great questions of his time. His 
poems and his prose works are in all our 
best libraries and if my readers will peruse 
them they will be convinced that I have 
done but simple justice to the character and 
career of that brilliant and great-hearted 
man, whom England condemned as a traitor 
and America will ever honor as a patriot. 



RICHARD T. ELY. 

Peace hath her victories and science her 
heroes in these modern times; victories 
which eclipse in their glory and significance 
all the bloody triumphs of the barbarous past, 
and heroes whose laurels are brighter and 
more lasting than those that encircle the 
brow of Caesar. The era of brain has suc- 
ceeded the era of brawn. "The pen is 
mightier than the sword," is no longer a 
prophetic ideal, but a recognized fact. Man 
is beginning to understand the destiny fore- 
shadowed in the command given his prime- 
val ancestor, "Subdue the earth and reign 
over it." He no longer cowers before the 
forces of nature, hearing in the thunder the 
voice of an angry God. Through the revela- 
tions of science the bolts of Jove have be- 
come our faithful servants. Harnessed to 
our cars, they are more obedient and far 
stronger and swifter than the horse. They 
light our homes, run our errands and carry 
our messages. This is but one example of 
what has been achieved by scientific men 
over the mighty forces of nature. The hero 
of eld sought bv his sword to conquer his 

246 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 247 

fellow men and compel them to serve him. 
He knew no other field of conquest. He 
had not learned that knowledge is power 
and thought a mighty force. The men of 
this age who use their brain power to exploit 
their fellows in the arena of labor, commerce 
or politics, to their selfish personal ends, are 
but one remove from their barbarian ances- 
tors, who used the implements of war in the 
interest of ambition and avarice. They use 
their knowledge in concocting schemes, by 
which the common earnings of the people 
can be monopolized by them. Science in 
their hands becomes a tool of grab. This 
is notably true of the science of political 
economy. The selfish monopolists are 
shrewd enough to use that science in their 
own interests, so far as possible. They sub- 
sidize masters of that science and use them 
to deceive the people by false facts and 
vicious logic. There are, fortunately for the 
world, political economists whose honor is 
above price and whose courage is sublime. 
Men who can neither be bought nor bull- 
dozed. Bulldozed expresses my meaning as 
no other word could, and it has come into 
such general use as to cease to be vulgar. 
Indeed, it has become a standard phrase. 
Webster's definition is "To intimidate. ,, 
Teachers of political economy have been in- 
timidated by threats of removal from posi- 
tions in universities, and some of them who 



248 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

have become obnoxious to the plutocratic 
monopolists have been dismissed by trucu- 
lent boards of trustees from institutions of 
learning founded, or in part sustained, by 
wealthy monopolists. 

Richard Theodore Ely is one of the most 
profound political economists of this or any 
other country, and one of the bravest. He 
is a scientist of exceptional learning, he hav- 
ing, after graduating from Columbia Uni- 
versity in 1876, entered the great University 
of Heidelberg, from which he received in 
1879 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 
the highest honor any institution of learning 
can confer. 

In 1 88 1 he became a teacher of political 
economy in Johns Hopkins University of 
Baltimore, which position he filled with dis- 
tinguished ability for ten years, when he 
accepted the presidency of the College of 
Political Economy in the University of Wis- 
consin. This position he still occupies. 
Doctor Ely was one of the founders of "The 
American Economic Association," and its 
first secretary, which important post he held 
until he was promoted to the presidency 
after the death of President Francis A. 
Walker. 

Doctor Ely's first book, "French and 
German Socialism," was issued in 1883. In 
1888 his "Introduction to Political Econ- 
omy" was published. In 1889 his "Social 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 249 

Aspects of Christianity" came out, and his 
"Coming City" appeared in 1902. His 
books have all been widely read, both in 
Europe and America, and they have had 
great influence. Doctor Ely may properly 
be styled a radical reformer, but his radical- 
ism has a tinge of conservatism, which keeps 
it within proper bounds. He opposes both 
the Ishmaelitish spirit of the individualistic 
school and the despotic theory of the Ger- 
man socialists. He would have the prin- 
ciples of sociology govern the science of 
economics in such a way as to prevent injus- 
tice, without infringing upon personal lib- 
erty. In 1890 Doctor Ely read a paper in 
our parlor in Washington City before the 
True Commonwealth Club, an organization 
which was founded for the purpose of pro- 
moting the principles of the American Eco- 
nomic Association. That paper was entitled, 
"Farmers and Natural Monopolies." The 
following abstract of it will serve to give a 
comprehensive idea of Doctor Ely's views 
on one of the great questions being dis- 
cussed at the present time. 

"By natural monopolies we mean those 
pursuits or businesses which tend, on ac- 
count of their own inherent properties, to 
become monopolies. They are distinguished 
from artificial monopolies, by which we 
mean monopolies rendered so by act of legis- 
lature. The most prominent examples of 



250 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

natural monopolies are water works, gas 
works, the electric lighting business, street 
car lines, telegraphs, telephones and rail- 
roads. Examples of artificial monopolies 
are those established by patent and copy- 
right. Artificial monopolies are made mo- 
nopolies temporarily because it is held to 
be the public interest that a limited monop- 
oly should be granted to someone who has 
rendered the public a service by inventions 
or authorship, while natural monopolies ex- 
ist in spite of our determination to maintain 
competition. The tendency to monopoly is 
a law inherent in their nature which will 
manifest itself sooner or later, and no statute 
law can prevent this. We can no more 
maintain permanently competition in the 
railroad business than we can make our riv- 
ers flow up hill. All phenomena which seem 
to indicate the contrary are only temporary 
and illusive. 

'The question of natural monopolies is, 
then, this: How shall these pursuits, which 
are natural monopolies, be rendered subser- 
vient to general public interests? The an- 
swer to this question is of vital importance 
to farmers, and it is well that they should 
understand it thoroughly. 

"Farmers, as such, may not seem to be 
immediately interested in the gas supply of 
cities, or in the lighting service or water 
supply, nor may it at first be apparent that 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 251 

a cheap and good management of telegraphs 
and telephones is of much concern to them. 
The farmers, however, if they ever intend 
to become prosperous, must learn to look 
at public questions from a broad social 
standpoint. They are not and never can 
become an exclusive class in the community, 
but can only prosper as the community 
prospers. High general wages, for example 
mean large purchasing power. Thousands 
and hundreds of thousands do not consume 
a sufficient amount of agricultural products 
to satisfy their rational wants. Measures 
which will increase general prosperity will 
augment the power of the masses to pur- 
chase those things which the farmers raise. 
Widely diffused prosperity will increase the 
consumption even of staples like wheat, corn 
and potatoes, and still more of products like 
meat and fruit of all kinds. Now all these 
services rendered by natural monopolies are 
essential to the well being of people living 
in cities who purchase what the farmer 
raises. The charges for these services con- 
stitute an important element in the cost of 
living in cities. There are artisans and me- 
chanics who for themselves and their fami- 
lies must pay out in street car fare nearly 
a tenth of their entire income. It be- 
comes apparent, then, how important for 
the general welfare is an efficient and cheap 
management of these natural monopolies. 



252 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

"Another point must be mentioned. The 
charges for services rendered by natural 
monoplies enter into the cost of doing busi- 
ness and increase the prices of articles. The 
manufacturer and merchant in cities consider 
their outlay for telegraphic service, for elec- 
tric lights and gas, and for telephone a regu- 
lar part of the expenses of doing business, 
and they are bound to get it back in the 
prices paid by farmers and others for things 
purchased. 

"Furthermore, the more prosperous other 
kinds of business, the less will be the ten- 
dency of people to rush into agriculture, 
and to overdo this one kind of business. 

"Of course, the greatest of all these nat- 
ural monopolies is the steam railroad, and 
no one doubts that the well being of the 
farmer depends immediately and directly 
upon the management of this monopoly. 
All these different natural monopolies, how- 
ever, work in harmony. Where there is no 
positive agreement they instinctively act to- 
gether to protect their interests against those 
of the general public. The editor ©f one of 
the leading papers in the Northwest told 
me that the difficulty of dealing with any 
one of these natural monopolies was that 
all the other monopolies were at once up in 
arlms to make a fight for one which it was 
attempted to hold in check. We should, 
therefore, have clearly before us one con- 



PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 253 

sistent plan for dealing with all natural 
monopolies. The only way in which they 
can be so managed that they will promote 
the prosperity of the country at large and 
become entirely subservient to all public 
interests is by means of government owner- 
ship, and management by public agents di- 
rectly responsible to the people. All farm- 
ers' organizations should make a demand 
for such ownership and management a 
prominent plank in their platfor»m. Private 
corporations must, according to the very 
law of their being, manage their business for 
private interests, and it is idle to hope to be 
able to compel them by statutes to change 
their own nature. Public ownership and 
management alone can protect the public 
against judicial and legislative acts stimu- 
lated by powerful private parties in their own 
interests. 

Finally, public ownership and manage- 
ment would remove from legislative halls 
of city, state and nation the most powerful 
and corrupt lobby ever known; it would help 
purify government; it would aid all patriotic 
citizens to build up a strong and pure gov- 
ernment, which would exercise its power to 
promote, in so far as it can be promoted by 
government, the interests of the great 
masses, the farmers included." 

Like all truly great and profoundly 
learned men, Doctor Ely is modest and un- 



254 PIONEERS OF PROGRESS 

assuming in manner, and so genial and com- 
panionable that all who know him person- 
ally pronounce him charming. I had met 
him before that evening on which he ad- 
dressed the club, but most of his auditors 
had not. They were delighted with his paper 
and enjoyed greatly the intellectual and 
social feast that followed. 

This eminent man is in the zenith of his 
career, and it is to be hoped that he may, 
for many years yet, be able to continue 
the great work of educating the people and 
especially the youth, in the principles of the 
true science of political economy and sociol- 
ogy, and in steering the Ship of State be- 
tween the moss-covered cliffs of monopo- 
listic special privilege and the dangerous 
reefs of anarchistic socialism, into the safe 
harbor of equal rights, freedom and justice. 



AUG 13 1906 



